The Brief

This story is a collaboration between LAist and Open Campus. 

Shayna Meikle owns Pigeon’s Roller Rink in Long Beach, along with a nearby skate shop and another rink in Mission Viejo. She spends most days in front of a computer, tending to the minutiae of running a business, or updating her company’s social media.

But, a few times a week, Meikle throws on a pair of skates and teaches clients the basics.

“Bend your knees!” she instructs them. “And stick your butt out!”

Shayna Meikle takes a spin with Elliott Fromm, general manager of her skating rink in Long Beach.

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“Arms in front of you,” she adds, as she extends her own.

About a decade ago, Meikle’s life looked different. As part of a teacher-training program, she taught science to middle schoolers.

But the money Meikle earned wasn’t enough to cover her living expenses. To make ends meet, she had to work after work.

During the week, Meikle was at her assigned campus in the city of Bell by 7 a.m. At 3:30 p.m., she’d clock out and race down to Carson for her college classes. From 7 to 10 p.m., she did roller skating gigs across the South Bay, and ran her own roller derby league. Then, she’d head home to Long Beach, exhausted. On weekends she was either at games, or studying and lesson planning.

Her schedule was intense, but she enjoyed the work. “I love science, and I love[d] the students,” she said. “I could have done that my whole life.”

But halfway through the four-year program, Meikle quit to focus on skating full-time.

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Across the U.S., states are constantly in the midst of teacher shortages. California's teaching prep and residency programs are supposed to be part of the solution. But many hopeful teachers struggle to balance their passion with the risk of debt and high cost of living.

The cost of becoming a teacher in California. Who can afford to do it?

Across the U.S., states are constantly in the midst of teacher shortages. California's teaching prep and residency programs are supposed to be part of the solution. But many hopeful teachers struggle to balance their passion with the risk of debt and high cost of living.

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Meikle doesn't regret it. But in the context of ongoing teacher shortages in California, that choice speaks to a broader failure to create conditions that entice educators to enter, or stay in, the field — conditions that are further complicated in Southern California by the cost of living and getting around.

In 2022, half as many people graduated from California's teacher-prep programs as in 2004, the peak year, according to the Learning Policy Institute.

“I think most people don't understand what it takes to become a teacher, the hoops you have to jump through,” said Jarod Kawasaki, department chair of teacher education at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

On top of proving subject matter competence and passing a string of required testing, K-12 teacher candidates in California must complete at least 600 hours of time working in a classroom — more than many other states in the country. Often, that labor is unpaid.

But to cultivate a reliable and diverse teacher workforce, experts don’t recommend scaling back on those requirements. Instead, they call on policymakers and stakeholders to design programs that help prospective educators meet them without self-sacrifice.

Staying in the classroom meant saying no

Meikle graduated shortly after the Great Recession. And when the jobs she’d had her eye on evaporated, she had to pivot.

A teacher-prep program at Cal State Dominguez Hills promised to let her put her degrees in geology and ecology and evolutionary biology to good use. In exchange for a four-year commitment to teach science, the program would cover the cost of her university coursework. Meikle would also earn about $19.50 an hour and receive an annual $4,000 stipend.

“For me, straight out of college, I was, like: ‘Oh my god! Nineteen dollars and fifty cents an hour? This is amazing!’” she said.

Teaching "really prepared me for where I am. I wouldn't be here without it. I learned so much. I grew so much," Meikle told LAist.

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Meikle spent the summer of 2011 learning about classroom management. Three months later, she had a classroom of her own. The program didn’t assign her a mentor teacher, she said, so she sought one out for herself. All in all, the start of her teaching career felt like being a baby bird getting pushed out of its nest, she told LAist.

Her stipend went to classroom supplies and professional clothes. The bulk of her wages went to pay off student loans. There wasn’t much left after that.

Little by little, the skating gigs got bigger. “I was getting all these opportunities, and I was getting paid well,” she said.

Meikle also started seeing she was having a positive impact on adults.

Meikle recalled meeting a mother of five who had struggled with suicidal thoughts. After six months in the roller derby league, the woman shared with Meikle that skating made her feel "more alive than ever." Meikle didn’t doubt the importance of her work after that.

With time, Meikle started getting coaching gigs around the world. But to take on those jobs, she had to leave her students with substitutes — something she didn’t like.

Meikle also began to envision a life outside the classroom, one with more flexibility and less burnout: “I have to go be a professional skater, or stay here and say no to all of these opportunities,” she thought.

Are you a student teacher in the Los Angeles area trying to balance clinical hours with paying the bills? Share your story with us.

What it takes to become a teacher

California offers multiple pathways toward completing the 600-hour requirement, including traditional teacher-prep programs and residency programs, which are modeled after medical residencies and usually provide some form of compensation.

Cathy Yun is deputy director of the Educator Preparation Laboratory, an initiative spearheaded by the nonprofit Learning Policy Institute and the Bank Street Graduate School of Education in New York City. The project has partners across the country, including UC Berkeley and UCLA. It aims to ensure that teachers enter the classroom ready to provide students with an education that fosters “deeper learning” skills, including critical thinking.

Yun has been studying teacher-prep programs since 2019. Before that, she started several residency programs at Fresno State.

Throughout the U.S, she told LAist, “fewer people are seeing teaching as a desirable or viable career choice.”

The shortages, Yun said, are especially pronounced in special education, dual-language instruction, math and science.

The 600-hour requirement is meant to give aspiring educators ample time in the classroom before they get a chance to lead one of their own, Kawasaki said. But the requirement can serve as a barrier, particularly at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where many students are either Pell Grant recipients (a federal award for students with “exceptional financial need”) or the first in their families to go to college (a trait associated with lower household income).

The semester before student teaching is often a “stopping point” for prospective educators, Kawasaki told LAist. Students will say: “I can’t quit my job, so I’m going to [take a] pause.”

Most students do come back, he said, but it can sometimes take years. In the meantime, students might save up to have money set aside while they complete their clinical hours. Others return to the program after landing coveted internships, which provide a salary.

“Is 600 hours great for learning? Absolutely,” Kawasaki said. “But [the requirement] assumes that you have the means to be able to do that without working.”

California requires more student teaching than many other states, including Arizona, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Texas.

But to attract more candidates to the profession, Kawasaki doesn’t believe it would be wise to lower California’s requirement. Spending a significant amount of time at a school, he said, allows aspiring teachers to see what it takes to help students grow. It also enables them to become part of the school community.

Middle school students walk around Young Oak Kim Academy in Koreatown.

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A teacher who stayed

Kevin Gutierrez is a middle school science teacher at Young Oak Kim Academy in Koreatown. He’s been at the school for eight years, including the time he spent student teaching.

Like Meikle, Gutierrez signed up for a teacher-prep program that fast-tracked him into the classroom. In 2016, immediately after earning a bachelor’s degree in public health at UC Irvine, he enrolled at UCLA. There, he worked toward a master’s degree in education and a preliminary credential in biology and general science. The program paid for most of his tuition — but Gutierrez still had to figure out how to pay for his living expenses.

During the week, Gutierrez used public transportation to move between Downey, where he lived; Koreatown, where he taught; and Westwood, where he studied. He paid using his UCLA TAP Card, which offered free unlimited rides. While he was in transit, he usually graded student work or caught up on sleep.

Shayna Meikle's commute as a student teacher. Not depicted: The jobs she'd take in and around the South Bay in the evening.

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Kevin Gutierrez's commute as a student teacher. The commute would be about 100 minutes without any traffic.

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After teaching all day and going to class, Gutierrez worked as an Uber driver, usually from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. He also picked up shifts on weekends.

Early on in his program, other challenges emerged. First, Gutierrez’s landlord renovated the apartment he shared with his family in Lynwood and used that as a reason to jack up the rent. Then, Gutierrez’s mentor teacher passed away.

What kept him going through this difficult time?

Gutierrez’s program paired him with another mentor, who was extremely supportive, he said. Plus, his colleagues at Young Oak Kim Academy were always checking in. They’d routinely pop by his class and ask: “Hey, do you need anything?”

Gutierrez also endured because of personal motivation. He wanted to honor his mother, who fled violence in El Salvador as a teenager and didn't get to go to high school.

Kevin Gutierrez in his classroom.

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He also thought about a child he met while volunteering as an undergraduate. The boy was in fifth grade, but he couldn’t add or subtract. Gutierrez was dismayed that the child had gotten that far in school without learning fundamental math.

He’d also noticed that there weren’t many Latinos leading classrooms. As someone who lost his father at a young age, he wanted to be a role model for others.

At UCLA, faculty learned about the challenges Gutierrez was facing and secured an additional grant to help him out. “It took so much weight off my shoulders,” he said.

Despite that grant, the tuition support and all the Uber rides, Gutierrez still had to take out a loan to get through school. “But it wasn’t huge,” he said.

Building a diverse workforce  

To attract more prospective teachers — and to make the profession more accessible to candidates from historically excluded groups — experts say it’s essential to consider the cost.

Kawasaki, the department chair at Cal State Dominguez Hills, has conducted research on the cost of becoming a K-12 educator, particularly for students from working class communities of color. For some of the California students in his research, getting through their prep programs required skipping meals to save money, or going without sleep so they could work.

In his work, Kawasaki notes that even teacher-prep programs with “frameworks that define teaching and learning around disrupting historical and current oppressive policies,” largely ignore the material needs of teacher candidates of color. “I, too, am complicit,” he wrote.

A 2023 report found that, nationally, more than 60% of all full-time, public school teachers have taken out student loans to pay for their education. Among them, more than one third reported working multiple jobs because of their student debt.

"Teaching is the best way for me to give back to my community, to give back to my people, " Gutierrez told LAist.

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“If we are really serious about addressing the [teacher] shortage, and especially addressing the shortage with a diverse workforce, then there has to be something that's done in terms of alleviating the financial burden that so many of our [teacher candidates] have to take on,” Kawasaki said.

Estela Zarate, dean of Loyola Marymount University’s school of education, noted that for many first-generation college graduates, “teaching is often the entry point to a middle-class job.”

“The cost of living has increased so much, particularly in areas like Los Angeles,” she said.

Incurring a loan to pursue teaching and then not being able to buy a home because you’re in debt is not going to draw more people to the profession, she added: “The math doesn't add up.”

In a May 2025 report, Yun and her colleague identified characteristics of high-quality teacher residency programs. These include a full-year of teaching experience alongside a mentor, coupled with the gradual release of responsibilities. Compensation for carefully-selected mentors and financial support for residents, they said, is also key.

To promote retention, the report also includes recommendations for policymakers. At the federal level, Yun and her colleague suggest covering teachers’ monthly student loan payments, so long as they remain in the classroom.

To encourage more people to join the profession at the state level, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, has introduced a bill to pay student teachers the same daily rate as substitute teachers.

The bill has advanced with bipartisan support through the Assembly and will be heard by the Senate’s education committee on June 25. But whether it’ll pass is anyone’s guess, given that California is grappling with a $16 billion decline in tax revenue.

Saying goodbye 

Leaving education, Meikle told LAist, is one of the toughest choices she’s ever made. “I cried about it. I went on long hikes by myself to think about it,” she said.

Before making her decision, she asked everyone around her for guidance. Meikle even asked her students to weigh in.

She polled her nearly 300 students: “Should I, your favorite teacher, leave you to do roller skating full time?”

All but one student said yes.

The rest told Meikle: “Go, Miss. Follow your dreams.”

Illustration by Olivia Hughes.

NEW YORK — In Brian Sanchez's slice of Astoria, the FIFA World Cup doesn't begin with the first match. It starts weeks earlier, with the arrival of a sticker album — and a mission.

It's a deceptively simple one: Fill the book with all the stickers representing World Cup teams, players, venues and other tournament details. But these stickers are sold in blind packs, similar to baseball or Pokémon cards, which adds to the fun and the headaches.

Sanchez, 20, has tried to complete the task before but never succeeded. This year, he planned to skip it altogether, but it was hard to ignore the chatter and excitement among his friends and family — both at home and abroad — who were all participating.

"Honestly it comes down to a little bit of FOMO," he said.

The hunt for stickers, produced by the Italian company Panini, is a decades-old World Cup tradition that's especially popular in Latin America and Europe. In the U.S., interest has been building steadily over the years, but this summer, the buzz is bigger than ever.

Jason Howarth, senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations at Panini America, said retailers reported being sold out of sticker packets within a week of the release in late April — unseen in previous World Cup cycles.

"There's a different energy coming out of it," he said. "Right now, it's outpacing where we were in 2022 by three to five times."

The surging demand comes as collectors face their toughest challenge yet. This year, they need to track down 980 distinct stickers to put the album to bed — 310 more than at the 2022 World Cup and a record number for the company. It's a reflection of the upcoming tournament's historic scale, which is expanding from 32 teams to 48 across three countries.

This edition will also be the second to last men's World Cup sticker album produced by Panini — ending a partnership that stretches back over five decades. Last month, FIFA announced that starting in 2031, U.S.-based Fanatics will be the official supplier of FIFA soccer cards, trading cards and stickers.

On a recent afternoon in Central Park, Sanchez met up with other collectors. Hunched over stacks of stickers, some two dozen people inspected the offerings with laser focus.

With only four stickers missing, Sanchez was already looking forward to earning bragging rights as the first person in his family across the finish line this year.

" I'm feeling pretty accomplished," he said. "I've been trying to get a win, and this is gonna be a huge win for me."

An expensive, labor-intensive but rewarding hobby

A single pack of seven stickers — available online, at corner stores or drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS — now cost $2, compared to four years ago when five stickers retailed for around $1. That means simply buying enough packs to accumulate 980 stickers would total $280.

Given the costs, finishing the book is rarely a solitary pursuit, and aficionados often meet up to spread the wealth, according to Crista Latvis, 26, who organized the recent sticker swap in Central Park.

"You can't just buy your way into it," she said. "Otherwise,  it's super expensive and you've got to be very lucky."

For many, these gatherings are part of the pastime's draw.

"It's great to meet other people who are also doing it and also excited for the World Cup, especially since it's here," Latvis said.

Sebastian Clavijo, who attended Latvis' swap, said he spent tens of thousands of dollars on his quest this year. Clavijo, 32, has been collecting Panini stickers since he was 4. This year, his goal is to complete the book only with pieces featuring red and purple borders — an even rarer get.

" I just like soccer and I love collecting," he said. "That's my hobby, you know?"

In 2022, Panini introduced stickers with different colored borders that vary in rarity. That element has been an especially big hit with the trading card community and contributed to the hobby's appeal in the U.S., according to Howarth from Panini America.

Panini popularity has grown along with soccer

Demand has always existed in New York, Texas, Florida, among other big states, but it's also emerging nationwide, in places like Phoenix and the Northwest, according to Howarth.

" As soccer has grown, so has Panini," he said.

Howarth believes part of this year's popularity stems from the expanded World Cup format. Teams that have never qualified for the tournament — and therefore never been sticker-fied by Panini — are finally getting their moment.

For some, completing the sticker album is driven by nostalgia for their childhood, family or home country.

Linda Lino never heard of the hobby until she was 18, and her grandmother gave her a Panini sticker book. That was in 2014. Lino has completed every World Cup edition since, in part in memory of her late grandmother.

"It started with my grandma and then it became like a whole family thing," Lino said. "I love the community that it brings together."

That's especially true with her father, who never had the chance to collect stickers when he was a kid in Peru, Lino said. Now, the two are making up for lost time.

"My dad is so excited," she said. "He's like 'I want to help you. I want to put the stickers together.'"

Clemente Lisi, a sports journalist who has written about the Panini sticker phenomenon, said the sticker album serves as a time capsule for the World Cup. With the tournament's return to the U.S. after 32 years, he expects it will produce more first-time collectors looking for a way to remember this summer.

"This may be the only tangible thing from a World Cup unless you go to a game," he said.

Lisi, who also runs Planet Soccer on Substack, anticipates that the U.S. company Fanatics will further cater to the market at home.

" It'll even become more American and more baked into our culture," he said.

Sanchez, the college student from Astoria, dabbles in collecting other items, like vinyls and trading cards. But what he appreciates most about the Panini sticker scene is its supportive and rarely competitive nature.

" The community around the World Cup stickers is something like I've never seen before," he said. "The community is just so nice."

After countless hours of trading and visiting multiple convenience stores, Sanchez found his 980th and final sticker at the swap in Central Park. It was of the Iraqi team. He let out a gasp, followed by a smile that spanned ear to ear. "Let's goooo!"

With a mountain of duplicates left, Sanchez wasn't ready to move on just yet. His next step was to help his mother finish her album.

" I'm going to take a break," he said. "I'm going to celebrate today and then get back to it."

Topline:

The backstory: Once a year, dozens of sound artists converge on the hill with views of the harbor below to perform their audio art, which can range from serene to “beautifully weird.”

What to expect: This year includes a performer bending a bar of tin with his bare hands to get it to emit what’s called a "tin cry" and synthesizer-based soundscapes that take inspiration from both the ocean and the industrial space below.

When to go: Soundpedro is free and lasts from 7-10 p.m. Saturday.

More info at the Soundpedro website.

When I first came to the states many years ago, if I’d mentioned Arsenal, people would have thought I was referring to the U.S. military or something. But all that has changed. You can now watch U.K. premier league games in sports bars, most kids play soccer, and Ted Lasso is must-watch TV.

To which I say — welcome. We English are proud of the fact that soccer began with us more than 150 years ago. And every World Cup, we think, surely this will be the year that the trophy returns home — the year that we’ll win!

Queen Elizabeth II awarding the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to Bobby Moore after England won the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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I mean it did happen … once… back in 1966. It’s such a long time ago the game was televised in black and white and shillings were still being used. My mother was nine months pregnant with my brother, and got so excited jumping up and down she went into labor and had him the next day. World Cup Willie they called him. Actually his name is David, but never mind.

Since then, every four years everyone in the U.K. watches the games with bated breath. And then something stupid will happen, and we’ll lose, like that time in 1998 when David Beckham (who played for England before he came to L.A. Galaxy) lost his temper and was sent off, and we’ll sit there, gloomy and despondent. I know because I was there in my friend’s living room in London, gloomy and despondent, thinking just once, just once, maybe could we please have a win?

David Beckham's infamous 1998 red card in the England vs. Argentina game.

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The last World Cup, I went to Ye Olde Kings Head in Santa Monica to watch England play. At 7 a.m. it was full of people already on their third pint of beer. And when the team got through to the next round, the gentle men of England ran outside the pub, whipped off their shirts and started weaving through traffic, singing football chants and acting like hooligans. I really couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or if it felt like home.

Anyway, this time, since I’m now an American citizen, it’s in my contract that I need to support Team USA. I’m a dual citizen, though, so I’ll also be cheering for England. If by any chance Team USA and England play each other, my two selves will be watching, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a cold brewski in the other, and the polarities will explode, or something. But what will probably happen is that both teams will be eclipsed by Brazil or France playing the beautiful game… beautifully. Cheers.

You may know about Union Station as an L.A. landmark or as a transportation hub — but how much do you know about its rich architectural history?

To foster that interest and knowledge, Metro created a series of public tours of the station this spring.

“There's so much that you might just walk by without really having the opportunity to delve deeply into,” said Zipporah Lax Yamamoto, deputy executive officer of Metro’s art program. “[The tours are] a really wonderful opportunity to be able to spend time with the station, learn more about the historic landmark, which belongs to all of us.”

Union Station in Los Angeles

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Architectural style

It’s called Union Station because when it opened in 1939, it connected the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway.

While it was designed by father-and-son team Donald and John Parkinson, the architects who gave us L.A. City Hall, its style is very different. Union Station’s interior and exterior mixes art deco, Spanish colonial and other styles into a hybrid dubbed Mission Moderne.

As you begin the tour, entering from Alameda Street, tour guides ask you to look up at the decorative elements in the high ceilings. The beams and geometric patterns may look like wood — but they’re actually just painted to look that way.

A community destroyed by development

Along the way, the tour gives background on pieces created more than 30 years ago. These include "City of Dreams/River of History" by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt in 1995. Sun’s piece uses remnants of the Chinese American homes torn down to build the station, a reference to the high price that community paid for this building’s construction.

Detail from "City of Dreams/River of History," created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt at Union Station.

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“It was an enormous price. Chinatown ceased to exist in this area. … The families that lived here during that time are still around and maintain archives of that time period and the original Chinatown here, and we've worked with those families to have those objects on display,” Lax Yamamoto said.

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s large-scale mural includes the face of a Chinese man, along with nine other people of different races, ethnicities and ages; a nod to the diversity of the city since its founding in the late 1700s.

There are also stops to see new art installed for the World Cup.

A mural by Richard Wyatt at Union Station

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There are three tours left in the series but the RSVPs have reached their maximum; however, Lax Yamamoto said Metro will decide whether to continue them based on what people have thought about the tours.

Meanwhile, Union Station is set to swell with people in the next couple of months as L.A. hosts World Cup games. The station is the site of an official FIFA-sponsored Fan Zone from June 25-28.