My Transforming Teacher-Anxiety Dreams

After 41 years in education, I still have anxiety dreams about beginning a new school year, and my only consolation is that I know such dreams, although varied in content, are common among teachers. Now that I’m teaching solely at the college level, however, those once-a-year night terrors in late July through early August now plague me for a second time in mid-January when I anticipate spring semester with a new group; plus, with my new courses beginning this week, the onslaught of those night terrors have taken on a completely different theme with all my teaching moving online.

Even when on the surface I’m feeling nothing less than excitement to begin a new school year, out of the blue, like clockwork, I awake tossing and turning having walked into my new classroom with students everywhere, filling every nook and cranny of the classroom and sitting on desks and countertops. And did I say, “sitting”? No, no…those students are talking, singing, dancing, laughing, yelling, without any hint—or care—that I have called class to order and am ready to teach them everything they need to know about English. It is pure chaos! Yes, my worst nightmare! (At least I have all my clothes on, as some of my teacher colleagues have confided that their anxiety dreams have them naked in front of the class.)

Evidently, though, I’ve left those chaotic scenes behind, at least for this upcoming spring semester. Yes, it’s so funny how the brain works—or how our dreams surface our evident anxieties that must be buried deep inside us during the day. Again this semester, I’m teaching Comp. II to college freshmen, but for the first time, this semester all my teaching is online, and, unbelievingly, my anxiety dreams have adapted to fit the situation. Two nights ago, I awoke, having dreamed about my incapability of formatting a document that I desperately needed to post in our learning management system—or LMS. I can still clearly see the two-column chart on which I was unable to move the contents from the right-hand column over to the left-hand column. That dratted software would not cooperate, leaving me helpless to meet my students’ needs—as if they would read the document anyway. Still, formatting it perfectly was not going to happen. I was beside myself! Then, last night I was hit with another outlandish nightmare…. I was grading a student essay online, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where the sets of parentheses fell. Yes, this essay was not only riddled with parentheses, but there was no logic of their pairings. As usual, I wanted to give the student the benefit of the doubt, and, as I too often do, I was doubting my own ability to figure out what a student—who was possibly much smarter than I am—was trying to do. I awoke just as I was having a major meltdown.

In contrast, during my years of mentoring new teachers, I always said that most good teachers—even veteran teachers—begin the school year with a bit of nervousness—a clear sign that the teacher is conscientious about doing a good job—but my dreams in the past 48 hours have been completely ridiculous! In fact, greatly anticipating getting started, I even released my course a few days early to the students already enrolled. I just hope that those nightmares aren’t predictors that my computer will be crashing any time soon.

When I bravely revealed my recent dreams to my husband, also a long-time educator, he suggested that the worst anxiety dream would be to show up for class and there are no students at all. Maybe. But I’ll hope for a full class of conscientious students who can’t wait to begin their first major essay! I know…I’m still dreaming!