MIAMI – Just hours from the first day of school in Miami-Dade County, some teachers were making sure what they need is in the classroom.
Local 10 News checked in with Eutaches Cella, who is anticipating third graders on Thursday at Southside Preparatory Academy.
“I’ve been teaching for 21 years,” Cella said.
A reading and language arts teacher, Cella gave a sense of the stressors teachers have to endure nowadays.
“Dealing with inflation, we have a shortage of teachers, there is a lot,” he said. “The burden is very high.”
But you have to stay positive, he said, and cannot forget the difference you can make in the lives of kids.
Local 10 also checked in with a teacher at the middle school level.
Susie Zamora teaches seventh and eighth grade English at Southside Preparatory Academy.
“This is going to be year 10 for me,” she said.
Zamora discussed the kind of challenges she faces with kids that age.
“The technology, the pandemic, the dependence on that technology, the general age of middle school, the political sphere,” she said.
Politics does play a role in the classroom, as many kids listen to the political rhetoric at home.
“They hear the talk around education, they hear people commenting on things and it impacts how they exist in this space,” Zamora said.
Maria Flores has been teaching for almost two decades.
“A lot going on, sleepless nights,” she said.
Flores is a sixth grade language arts and journalism teacher.
Like thousands of teachers in Miami-Dade, she is making sure lessons are ready and the energy is just right.
“If they don’t see that energy, if they don’t see that you want to be here, they will feed off that,” said Flores.