Ridiculous but valuable

Editorial Note: The graphic was created by Production Manager and famous artist, Reed Waller, at the request of Deb Bently. Deb spoke with instructors from four area Waseca County schools, about the types of dreams they have prior to the start of a new school year. Here is what she learned:

“On any given day, it’s impossible to guess what might happen,” says one area classroom instructor. 

Waseca language arts teacher Karen Pfarr Anderson remembers the day her ceiling-mounted projector crashed to the floor during class. JWP sixth-grade instructor Jace Emory points to his newly remodeled classroom where desks, books, and decorations are stacked on top of and among each other. “Teachers do a lot more than teach,” he observes.

WEM secondary school counselor Bridgette Reuvers mentions sleeping with Post-it notes next to her bed. “I don’t want to ever again wake up in the middle of the night with a fantastic insight, and then forget it before morning,” she explains. NRHEG middle school language arts teacher Mark Domeier shares a similar sentiment: “I had this fantastic epiphany, “ he remembers, “and I thought I would remember it. But it’s just gone.”

Turns out, starting conversations about sleep and dreams with any group of teachers will lead to an inescapable conclusion: What they do is truly inseparable from who they are. One teacher observes,  “People think we have our summers ‘off,’ but almost as soon as one year ends, I’m getting ready for the next one.”

Her point is perhaps best illustrated by “summer nightmares.”

“I think every teacher has had the one where they wake up and their clock says it's 8:47 a.m.,” mentions JWP’s Jace Emory. “The principal or the superintendent calls and says they’re watching the class, but why isn’t the teacher there…

“Then there’s the overcrowded classroom: There are supposed to be 20 students, but there are 45.

“Or the ‘sass-back’ dream, where everybody’s talking back.”

Another standard among elementary teachers, mentions Steph Watts of JWP is “I have to take my students somewhere and I don’t know where I am in the building. So we just keep wandering around.”

In an alternate version, WEM’s Carrie Brown has dreamt that, “There’s a fire, and I don’t know where the door is, so I end up breaking a window.”

Or a rather universal nightmare: “The copy machine’s not functioning, and I won’t be able to get my materials ready for class.”

As a junior high girls basketball coach, JWP’s Emory recalls that, “In a dream, your team never wins. It’s like they’re wearing concrete shoes. Every shot misses.”

For many teachers, the “start-of-year” nightmares begin in August. Others report having them all year. “In what other position,” asks NRHEG family and consumer sciences teacher Kelly Delacruz, “do people have a ‘first day of school’ every week?”

Because her classroom equipment includes sewing machines and cooking equipment (read as “needles and knives”) there is plenty to be concerned about. “I think the dreams are my brain doing everything it can to make sure things go right,” says Delacruz. “By giving me these vivid dreams about what can go wrong, it’s making sure I stay alert.”

JWP’s Tammy Barnes concurs. “[Teaching] is more than a job. It consumes your thoughts.

“We’re always trying to think 10 steps ahead,” she says. “Sometimes we need to make quick-pivot, turn-on-a-dime changes, and we’re doing what we can to be ready.”  Barnes remembers a dream in which, on the first day of school, she began reading off her roster of students and no one in the classroom was responding. Her solution, in the dream, was to tell her elementary students to “choose a name you like.” Each of them was to take one of the premade name tags and “be that person for today.”

In a similar vein, another common teacher nightmare is arriving at school on the first day completely unprepared. “I’m in my classroom,” one NRHEG secondary teacher describes. “The kids are milling around and I don’t know what their names are. I don’t know what class it is, so I don’t know what materials I’m supposed to teach them. The bell rings, for some reason after only a few minutes, and the next set of kids comes in. I don’t know who they are, either, or what subject they’re here to learn.

“Finally, I thought to myself, ‘I would never let this happen. This must be a dream!’ And I woke up.”

JWP’s Emory remembers, even though he is a sixth-grade classroom teacher, dreaming one time that he was the choir director: It was one week before a big concert, and he had no idea where to begin.

And why all these dreams? “In our heart of hearts, we want things to go right,” says Emory. “Maybe the dreams help us be more adaptable. After all, adapting is what we do all the time.”

“It’s the excitement of starting a new year,” declares JWP band director Adam Hille, who admits his start-of-year nightmares are pretty mild. “Oh, the kids forgetting their music and things like that,” he describes. “But really, I think it’s my mind saying, ‘Okay, let’s get ready to do this!’ “

“We’re completely connected to what we do,” says WEM teacher Lisa Becker. “We care about our students, and that doesn’t change over the summer.” Becker describes one dream in which a student escaped her and was lost after running out of the building. “I woke up sobbing,” she remembers. In contrast, she also dreamt about one of her real-life students who was wheelchair bound and unable to walk or talk. In the dream, the student “got up and walked across the stage to receive her diploma,” remembers Becker with a smile. Then, smiling even more broadly, she adds, “She also spoke to me. I can still hear it: ‘Hi, Mrs. Becker,’ she said with this perky voice and this big smile. It was a fantastic dream.”

WEM’s Carrie Brown says, “I’m both a teacher and a mom. I know how much trust I place in my children’s teachers. I want to be worthy of that same trust.”

When it comes to back-to-school dreams, perhaps the most vivid is one recalled by JWP’s Liz Winters. Now a Title I coordinator, she had the dream while still teaching third grade, about 10 years ago. Remembering it still makes her laugh.

In the dream, she arrives in her third-grade classroom on the first day of school only to be informed that the school has implemented some new policies. One of them is that, in order to increase their understanding and appreciation for each others’ jobs, teachers are being randomly assigned to other levels of instruction. She is now in charge of the kindergarteners.

“But I don’t have a circle time rug!” she protests.

The superintendent is not won over, and Winters is sent to the empty kindergarten room. There she is  informed of a second new policy: Teachers are now required to pick up their own students. In their own cars. Without mileage reimbursement.

“How will I fit them all in my PT Cruiser?” she asks the superintendent. He is still unyielding, so Winters sets out to pick up her students.  After some pandemonium, in the way of dreams, the students are all present. 

Doing her best to take control despite feeling completely out of sorts–and still with no circle time rug–Winters is just getting started when the superintendent arrives to explain one more new policy. The school has implemented the use of “therapy” animals, and the kindergarten room has been assigned a puppy. A very young, untrained puppy. 

“And it’s recommended that he should be let out every 15 minutes,” recalls Winters, nearly collapsing with laughter.  “It was all so vivid, and so completely ridiculous. But it felt very real at the time.”