Chapter 6: Social Support and Covid-19: How U.S. K–12 Teachers Were Impacted by Gratitude and Mentoring During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Functioning as frontline workers, teachers have experienced heightened stress during the COVID-19 pandemic, which presents consequences for their well-being and job sustainability. Prior research demonstrates teacher wellbeing can be facilitated by both vertical support (school leadership) and horizontal support (colleagues), but the current U.S. educational landscape includes new stressors threatening the bounds of old support systems. The current study extends prior research on teacher support by conducting a modified grounded theory to explore the mechanisms underlying the ways in which teachers experienced social support during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this resource supports them in a high-stress career. Forty teachers from a stratified random sample of 300 public school teachers in a large southwestern district were recruited, resulting in 23 participants of varying vulnerability to stress based on a prior phase of the study. Two researchers analyzed transcriptions from six, one-hour focus groups, with an audit trail, peer debriefing, and other triangulation techniques employed. Three thematic outcomes illustrated how social support—specifically mentoring and gratitude—was helpful for teachers at the individual level (affective support), the classroom level (instructional support), and the building level (community support). The unique combinations of these varying levels of support ultimately provided sustenance for teachers who were working in an ever-changing and challenging environment during COVID-19. Such findings have implications for school and district leaders, as they reveal the importance of building multi-tiered systems of support in which teachers have opportunities to positively interact with their professional community.