Hi everyone! This is my first post here.
I am studying Elementary School Education and I am finally approaching my final months to graduation. When I was accepted into my university, I declared undecided until I took some education classes. I wanted study computer animation, but my intuition led me to select education instead. How dependent we are on education led me to realize how vital and beneficial it is to all walks of life. Two years after I selected my major, the computer animation major ceased! Poof! Gone! It effaced off my university’s course catalog to be never seen again.
Now, I am in my student-teaching. My school is wonderful and my cooperative teacher is providing me with best support I had within my experience of field observation. After the first two months, my motivation to teach plummeted. I feel overwhelmed with the amount of multitasking that should be applied within my first grade classroom. I tend to stutter when I speak with everyone in my school be cause I tend to feel timid in environments I am not quite settled into. Thus, I criticize myself to talk more, but I since I am a novice at teaching… I feel I have to keep my mouth close and absorb as much information I can. I am having a hard time caring about what I am teaching, because I am not sure if I am being effective or if I really want to be a teacher.
I love animation and I know that I can draw. I am a fan of the process of creating animated films and I find joy from designing characters. There are moments when I am stressed, my thoughts lures me to think about reconsidering my choice of career.
I am having cold feet. Should I just go ahead and work in education and see where it will bring me?
HI OP, I am just seeing this-I stop by this forum occasionally because my D intends to major in education. Your post reminds me of a friend of ours-very smart, driven, absolutely sure she wanted to teach-until she did. It was apparently a disaster where she was putting in 16-hour days to get everything exactly perfect and yet felt she had no command of her class or the kids. She was overwhelmed. After graduating and getting some distance from her disastrous student teaching time, she looked around her district to see what other things she could do. She discovered that it had an animation/craft/engineering art lab that needed a supervisor, and she is proficient at many crafts and art types. She is loving her job. She interacts with students, but more as an adviser, not as a teacher in front of a gaggle of students.
Maybe you can look for something like this? Or ever create a position like it. D’s school has an art engineering class that was thought up by one of the faculty and the kids love it, even though it’s after school. It’s probably pretty unusual that a district would fund something off the cuff like that, but hers in an unusual school. Maybe you can take a look at the alternative schools in your district. Good luck!