The Substitute Teaching Crisis Almost Prevented Me From Having a Child
The travails of teaching while trans
This year’s Valentine’s Day would be different. Rather than a pleasant dinner, cocktails at Semi-Tropic in Echo Park, and yummy sex, my fiancée and I would spend the evening looking forward to my sperm-freezing appointment the following morning at California Cryobank. I’d been delaying my medial transition because hormone replacement therapy decreases semen’s volume and motility. I’d scheduled the $571 initial appointment months in advance and had submitted my two-page absence request to the school district.
I’d be missing one class period, and planned the absence for a day I’d have my AP English class in the morning. They were more compliant out of a generally higher level of GPA anxiety, thus more likely to work on a rhetorical analysis of a Dolores Huerta speech without the lead teacher present. The request felt appropriate.
Here’s the rundown.
My ability to conceive a child now faced its final boss: the nationwide substitute teacher shortage. The shortage was bad before the pandemic, with 20% of teacher absences unfilled — affecting disproportionately already-disadvantaged communities (Hechinger Report). But since the pandemic, 99% of schools report they can’t regularly find…
