marianna mcmurdock

The son of Trinidadian pastors and youngest of three brothers, Joshua Modeste didn’t grow up talking about mental health. Don’t cry, give it to God in prayer. 

“Society has told me that Black men are supposed to be strong and figure things out on their own."

But the anxiety in his gut has been building. In 2023, Modeste lost his first student, Benji, shot in the stomach a few blocks from school. Some of his students have been suicidal. Another was eating lunch in his Harlem classroom when she learned her friend, Saniyah, was stabbed to death. He relied on instinct, not training, to console her in their basement hallway.

Teachers are tied with nurses for experiencing more job-related stress than any other profession. Yet help for classroom leaders is hard to come by.

Mental health insurance coverage varies district to district, if visits are covered at all. Even in New York City — where teacher copays for outpatient, in-network mental health care max out at $25 — provider shortages and stigma can prevent educators from accessing care consistently. 

“Nobody in the teaching department or other teacher candidates talked to us about that stuff — trauma and grief, emotions, and how to manage all of that while trying to maintain a classroom of 30 kids who are going through their own situations at home,” Modeste said. “It was kind of like, ‘If you can’t handle this, then this is not the job for you,’” There’s not a doubt in his mind that he should continue teaching. He’s flourishing professionally, last year among the prestigious FLAG Awardees for Teaching Excellence. 

But the impact, what experts Psychologists dub the phenomenon vicarious trauma or empathetic distress, is taking a toll on his well-being.

“You need therapy when you have trauma exposure,” says Tish Jennings, an expert on teacher stress and social-emotional learning at the University of Virginia, who says without it people can become jaded, hopeless, numb and react to student behavior disproportionately. 

“It’s very hard these days to get good treatment, because there’s such a huge need, and there’s such a shortage of good clinicians.”

For now, Modeste and his advisory students have started role-play scenarios on setting boundaries and saying no, swapping TV shows and music that helps them cope with feeling overwhelmed. Leaning on cultural affinity groups and colleagues, he is finding ways to “reframe” the parts of his life that serve as informal therapy: journaling, writing affirmations like ‘focus’ and ‘love’ on his bathroom mirror in Expo marker and caring for his pet fish.

In his Ph.D. program at Columbia Teachers College, he’s researching ways to make science education more culturally responsive, and digging into the experiences of male science teachers of color. He doesn’t hide emotions anymore, or ignore what’s happening outside of school. His default demeanor is bubbly, but on days he’s going through something, he smiles and talks less.

“And kids will ask me like, you know, ‘Yo, Modeste are you OK?’ That’s when I open up … ‘Oh, you know, I’m going through some stuff with my family, I just need some space right now,’” he said. “I think that that shows them that when I ask them if they’re OK, the responses that I’m trying to elicit.”

First published in The 74, 2023