My pedagogic ecology has had an interesting impact this year. Compared to the last two years I was teaching full time in one building, the dramatic change my job has undergone this year has taken a dramatic impact on my positive mindset. I love teaching art to elementary school kids. I feel overwhelmed by their interest and love for the arts. It brings such a great energy to the classroom that I then exert on my kids. I love them and the classroom environment in those situations. Those are the days I find myself leaving with a huge smile on my face. However, now that I have taken on seventh grade, I feel as though I have become a monster. I don’t feel as though I get much time to teach, and all I am dealing with is behaviors. I think it is important and best for the kids when you realize as a teacher that you are not effective for them. I am not this year with seventh grade. It is forcing to question everything I am doing and whether or not I should quit the profession altogether. I do not feel as though I can meet their social emotional needs to help them, let alone to present the art lesson. I have tried several different tactics, changed projects to modify and surveyed what areas of interest they would like me to teach. Yet, I am still found wanting. I deal with random nonsense every day that no teacher should have to endure. I find myself having good days, and something always seems to squash it. For instance, I had the week from hell last week. Thursday was ending on such a positive note; and as I was driving to my second school, I hit a road block. Most of the roads getting to my second school were shut down due to construction. As I arrived late to school, and finally got my seventh-grade class running (and the kids were doing well on task), a vent in the floor starts to leak sulfuric smelling water. As the water rose from the vent, the kids went crazy; and I could not get them to calm down to listen to instructions. Well, needless to say, the seventh and eighth grade students clogged all the toilets on the second floor with goodness knows what. It caused my later classes in the day to be shared with the librarian. Having art and library in the same class is never affective.
Needless to say, with all that is going on, I am currently applying for a job outside of my current district. One in an extremely small district where I would not have to teach middle school. I am torn because I love a good chunk of the kids I still teach, but I feel disconnected from that school because I am itinerant this year. My other school has grown on me because of the majority of the students, but one of my sections of seventh grade is ruining it for me. One class. I only see them every other day, but they are having the capacity to ruin it all. I don’t know how to change that mindset. Then there is the underlying doom that every year I could be at a different school because I do not have seniority. I know that I do not want to teach at a school district that has 37 elementary schools. That leaves the uncertainty that I can be swapped in any of those buildings, any year, due to budget. However, the current position I am applying for is itinerant and will stay itinerant because it is a small district. I would be teaching Pre-K through 5th grade if I am offered a position. I am contemplating throwing the towel in at the end of the year and doing a career change myself. Becoming another statistic that many teachers quit within the first five years. Demonstrating that maybe all my influences on pedagogic ecology were just not enough or lining up correctly.