Stress is one of the invisible enemies of the demands a learning organization imposes on its learners. Stressors affect all those working in learning organizations, children, teachers, and leaders. How that manifests in each individual is different. Stress is not observable and not all stress is negative. The response to stress is what we see.  It is most difficult for the students. They have not yet developed the coping mechanisms that help to maneuver through stress. They come to schools carrying the burdens of the unresolved stressors that are a result of what is happening at home. It can be poverty, matters of physical and mental health for the students and their families, language barriers. These are the obvious ones. Then there are the less recognizable ones like a sudden family problem, a loss of a relative, a change in living conditions, and so on.  Yet, what we see is the response to the stressors. We see memory problems, difficulty with concentration, poor judgment, negativity, and worrying as the cognitive symptoms. There are also physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms (helpguide.org). In good faith schools respond to the symptoms absent knowledge of or ability to affect the causes. Assumptions are made about how to intervene. Sometimes we are lucky and the interventions work.

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