Election Section

First Person: Teacher Anxiety Dreams By Mary J. Barrett Special to the Planet

Friday September 16, 2005

My teacher anxiety dreams started in mid-July, even though I retired in June. The dreams keep coming, warning me of my failings and of imminent disaster. Never mind that I will not ever have to step back in any classroom again. The dreams are vivid attacks on my confidence. They aren’t true nightmares, filled with chasing or falling, but they are enough to make the next day gloomy. 

The main scenario is repeated over several nights with different characters seen from different angles, as though my inner cinematographer is trying to perfect the shot. A young teacher I worked with last year is talking about me behind my back. 

“I like Mary,” she tells another teacher, “but she’s not ‘all that.’ Don’t let her into your classroom. She won’t be any help at all.” 

When the teacher sees me, she begs me to come help her again soon. “It’s all good,” she says to me. I smile but underneath my acquiescence, my heart is rent with self-doubt. 

Even as parents worry about their child’s schooling and children about homework and Nikes, most teachers are in the grip of anxiety dreams. One young teacher dreamed all summer that she hasn’t done what she needs to do. 

“It’s the night before school starts. I haven’t set up anything in my classroom at all. There’s no furniture in place, no name tags. I ask my mom and dad to come help me. They come but the chairs are not the right sizes for the little children. As I start to wake up, I think ‘it’s still early, if I get up now maybe I can get some things ready before the bell rings.’ Then I wake up all the way and realize it’s two months before school starts. My friend wants me to go to therapy to get rid of these dreams!” 

I assure her none of us, no matter how much therapy we’ve had, have gotten rid of these dreams. Blanche, who’s taught 40 years and has retired, too, reports she’s had three major anxiety dreams this summer. 

“They all have the same theme. My room is never prepared. Nothing is set up. The custodians left the furniture smooshed against the wall. I open the cupboards and they are completely bare. There aren’t even pencils. I have no money, so I get old shoe boxes and start cutting off the tops to make pencil boxes for the kids. It’s pitiful. Then my co-teacher, whose room is set up beautifully—it’s like Martha Stewart’s—offers to help me.” 

Carole, a veteran kindergarten teacher, is still anxiously dreaming too.  

“The basic outline is that I’m teaching and there’s hundreds of students. They come and go, in and out the doors. No one is paying any attention to me. Several parents and district administrators are observing the situation. My main concern is with the safety of the children. I’m appalled that there could be so many children. Then, in the next scene, I’ve lost my hearing; I can’t hear the bell ringing. The students are waiting outside but I don’t know it. Eventually I show up and discover they’ve raided another teacher’s storage cabinet.” 

Paul, a high school art teacher, has a recurring dream that he’s late and can’t find the class he’s supposed to teach. Next he dreams that someone finally notices his teaching isn’t good enough. The person sarcastically says, “You get paid for this?” 

Pamela, who teaches first grade in a private school, is in front of the class in her underwear. “I’m always in various degrees of disrobe. I realize something is not right and I had better do something fast, but I don’t know what it is. At first everything feels normal; but, then I realize I’m exposing myself.” 

Joe, a veteran first grade teacher in a public school, dreams short vignettes of field trips where every little thing goes wrong. “The bus is late, the lunches fall in the lake, a kid gets lost, but then is found. There’s never lots of detail; but there’s always lots of worried feelings.” 

Becky, an elementary teacher, dreams she’s been assigned to teach in junior high. She’s told, by an administrator, he can place her anyplace he wants, so there! In Jan’s dream, she’s naked during an interview. When she gets back out to her car, she wonders if the interviewers noticed. Barbara dreams that, as she teaches, the room expands and expands and there are students way, way off in the distance. She’s panicked because she knows her voice can’t carry that far. 

Rita’s anxiety is about the end of the year. She’s required to let go of the children next spring. She’s on a magic carpet flying over the city. 

“It’s a colorful Turkish carpet with fringes. I’m sitting on the magic carpet picking up kids. I reach down and pluck them. There’s laughter on the carpet but an underlying feeling of dread. I have to place the children with their next teacher. I’m afraid the next teacher won’t appreciate them especially because these children are the difficult ones. They are in my heart you know. ‘Where will they go,’ I wonder, but I have to let go of them. I’m moving on, and I put them down; it’s like they’re lost.”  

I hope there is a statute of limitations on my teacher dreams. Did my inspiring teachers dream? Are they still? 

 

Mary J. Barrett is a retired Berkeley Unified School District teacher of 35 years.