School Nightmares

Since my first year of teaching I've had school nightmares during the summer. They usually don't come until the week before I'm due to go back to work. The context almost always consists of some form of chaos making it impossible for me to do my job. One dream had all of my stuff moved out of my room and piled in the middle of the floor in another room - the day before school started. Another had me teaching in an L-shaped room where I could only see half the kids at any given time and was having to use a lapel mic for everyone to hear me.

In the past two years, the dreams have increased in frequency, now occurring at intervals throughout the summer instead of being limited to the week before school. Last night I had the second one for this summer. (Thankfully, I don't remember anything about the first one, except that I had one.) However, last night had me trying to get students organized on the first day of school. The big problem this time was that I was in a large room being shared by 4 classes and 4 teachers! Everytime I tried to get a lesson going with my students I was drowned out by another teacher trying to teach his/her class. What I finally decided to do was take attendance. In doing so, I found out that the little boy who lived with me in foster care for a while was in my class! I made a mental note to discuss with the principal moving him to another class.

Aside from this impossible class arrangement, I was living in a what appeared to be a dorm room in a hotel. The room was right beside an elevator and the head of the bed, which couldn't be moved, was on the wall that the room shared with the elevator. I was sharing the room with a friend who had taped pictures on every available spot on every wall and I was trying to convince her that the wall by my bed was my wall to decorate. (This was my friend/colleague, Monique, who just moved to Virginia.)

I'm sure there will be more school nightmares to come ... the good news is, they never come true. (or haven't yet, anyway)