As the United States enters the second full year of the coronavirus pandemic, the devastating effects on the country’s workforce have become impossible to ignore. Now, in the third consecutive school year affected by the pandemic, stress, illness and other pressures are driving an aging American teacher workforce to retire. Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein told Newsweek that she believes if there were no pandemic, more people would stay in education longer. “Now that we’re back in person, with the number of people constantly going in and out of quarantine protocols and the incredible shortage of substitute teachers, … what has occurred is this incredible stress,” Bernstein says. “My fear is that it will create more shortages.”
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