In 2022, there was a reported number of one thousand teacher vacancies in Houston, Texas, and a number of eight thousand in Florida. Teachers have been leaving schools in drives and the numbers don’t seem to be slowing down. With the empty spaces in schools, some states and districts have been lowering the qualifications requirements for teachers in order to fill the open spots.

Most of the issues for teachers lie in the salary that teachers get. With troublesome kids, they feel they don’t get their money’s worth and leave.

English teacher, Stephen Aguilar, has been a teacher for Sachse high school since it opened and has no plans of leaving soon. In order for a teacher to keep doing the job they’re doing, they need to be fulfilled in both a monetary aspect and with job satisfaction.

“It has to be rewarding monetarily but it can also be rewarding with the students, building relationships,” Aguilar said. “I enjoy what I do and building these relationships with students, the building, my bosses, that all plays a role into retention.”

Statistics show that new teachers quit within their first six months of working (according to Vox articles). Coach Ethan Tran is a new teacher and has no plans on leaving the job.

“People stay in it because they’ll have kids over everything else,” he says. “I’m young so I’m not too sure on future plans, but I don’t really have a reason to go.”

In order for the school to gain more teachers from the effects of teacher shortage, the Garland School District was able to hire non-certified teachers with the requirement that they get their certification by the end of the year.

“We’re still looking for quality individuals,” principal Shae Creel says. “But the certification piece had an asterisk beside it, so we could have enough adults in the building to teach the kids.”

With some states allowing teachers with only a high school diploma to teach classes, the students are greatly effected. Students are the future, and an untrained teacher that has expectations to teach a class full of students brings pressure not only onto the teacher but also onto the students.

“I feel like the class would be useless,” sophomore Juliann Nguyen said. “Teachers basically shape our future, sometimes we can’t afford to be picky but we need to hire quality teachers.”