Dathan Trevino TEXAS- The COVID-19 pandemic may be over, but Texas is still in the middle of a teacher shortage. Substitutes, like Elidaisabel Rodriguez, are having to fill in for teachers more frequently.
According to the Texas Education Agency website, 13.4% of teachers left between the Fall of 2021 and the Fall of 2022. An increase from the prior year’s 11.5%, and the 9.3% the year before.
English Junior and substitute teacher Elidaisabel Rodriguez highlights one of the reasons she saw teachers leave post-pandemic.
“Kids are different, in these past couple of years,” Rodriguez said. “They’re kind of emotionally stunted, and there’s, I don’t know if you’ve seen on social media that a lot of the students, a lot of the kids have been acting out a lot in classrooms. They just don’t care about the consequences.”
Rodriguez continues by saying she hopes teachers receive a pay raise for dealing with situations outside their paygrade.
“A lot of their classrooms they have a lot of things that they, they take out of their own pocket,” she said. “A lot of administrations, like they don’t give them the funding for that, or like school districts in general.”
