Teacher Dreams

It’s the first day of classes. I go to my class. The students are all there sitting quietly looking at me. I put my bag on top of the teacher’s desk and begin taking my stuff out. I take out my pen, my grade book, the class roster, and my lesson planning book. I look in my bag, but I don’t see the syllabus. I look again. I know I made copies of the syllabus. I’m supposed to give it out and go over it with the students.  I look in my bag again. The copies I made aren’t there. I begin to panic. Did I leave the syllabus on my desk? Did I drop the copies in the hallway on my way to class? Did I leave the copies home? I look in my bag again. The syllabus still isn’t there. I look out at the students. They are all staring at me. What am I going to do??  
 
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t have the syllabus.”
 
The students stand up.
 
“What are you doing?”  I say. The students don’t say anything. They just stand there.
 
“Sit down,” I say beginning to panic. They don’t. “Please,” I plead. “Please sit down.”
 
“We don’t have to listen to you,” a student yells at me.
 
“We don’t have to do what you tell us to do,” another student shouts.
 
“Sit down,” I shout back. The students start moving towards the door. “Where are you going?” I shout. “What are you doing?” I shout louder. “Come back here.”
 
“We don’t have to do what you say,” several students shout as they walk out the door.
 
“Come back,” I yell because I don’t know what else to do.
 
“We don’t have to listen to you,” a student shouts at me.
 
“You aren’t the teacher,” they begin to chant. “You aren’t the teacher!”
 
And then I wake up.
 
When I first started teaching I thought these teacher anxiety dreams would go away. I believed that after a couple of semesters, I would have this whole teaching thing down, so that walking into a classroom and facing a group of students would be like walking into the grocery store, buying gas, brushing my teeth—something I’ve done so many times I could do it in my sleep.
 
But that has not been the case. Before the start of each semester the dreams still come and the butterflies that filled my stomach before I walked into my very first class are also still there.
 
Once, I did consider quitting. One afternoon in my second year of graduate school, I was walking across campus to my class. I had worked out my lesson plan the night before, but now, on my way to class, I was questioning it. What if the exercise I had planned didn’t work? What if the students didn’t like it? What if it took longer than I thought? What if it didn’t take as long as I thought? As I was working through all these “what if’s,” I found myself getting nervous, the butterflies growing in my stomach. I stopped, took a deep breath and thought, “Am I really going to be able to do this every day of my life?”  I took another deep breath and went to class where everything went fine.
 
But the idea of quitting stayed in the back of my mind until one day while sitting in a teaching practicum required of all students in our graduate program, our professor said in his usual off-hand manner, “Teaching is one of those things—for the amount of time you actually spend doing it, you spend more time worrying about what you are going to do before you do it, and then after you have done it you spend even more time worrying about what you did until it’s time to start worrying about your next class.” I looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement. Then it hit me. I wasn’t the only one to have butterflies and anxiety dreams.  It was normal to wonder, to question, to constantly reflect on your teaching practices. This is what teachers do.
 
And I have come to realize that questioning, wondering, and reflecting is something I need to do as a teacher. I’ve learned that my anxiety dreams are more about the anticipation of something new that is about to begin, rather than about my fears the students will walk out on me. Although I have taught the same course many times, the dreams and the butterflies remind me that I’ll be meeting and working with new student/writers who will offer me their own insights on things that will cause me to wonder and to question my own perspectives. The constant what if’s that run through my head on my walks to class serve to remind me that I’m not teaching a course, but rather I’m working with a group of people—all with various experiences as writers, readers, and thinkers. The start of the semester is just that—the start of something new and something I certainly don’t want to do in my sleep.