Our friend Peter Greene is now writing for the Progressive, as well as writing prolifically for his blog. He never runs out of material, because the madness that he lacerates never seems to end.
This is a different kind of Peter Greene essay, one that reflects on his feelings about returning to school on the first day. All of us, or nearly all of us, are familiar with the Unprepared Student Dream. Late in life, it recurs. You find yourself going into a classroom in high school or college and you realize that you never read the assigned books and are completely unprepared for the crucial test that you will take that day. You wake up and shake yourself, happy that it was only a dream. Peter tells you what a teacher dreams.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How interesting.
I dream of having to teach a class and can’t find the room or don’t have any idea of how many students are coming nor do I have any idea of what I’m supposed to teach. This usually gets topped off by having students who disrupt the class because I have no idea of what I’m doing. (I’m a retired elementary music teacher.)
Sometimes, I’m the student. Quite often, I can’t find the classroom and arrive late to discover that there is a test and realize that I know nothing about the material.
I wonder how many such dreams I’ll have before my subconscious decides I’ve worked out all of my subliminal frustrations caused by years of teaching and taking college courses.
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Nice essay, Peter. I’m glad you’ve found an even wider audience for your writing.
One of the funny (but scary) school nightmares I’ve had more than once involves being late to class (Where? Why? Of course, It’s always unclear.) I’m trying, trying, trying to get there but my feet seem to be stuck in a human-sized version of those glue traps that some people use to catch mice. Students, teachers are all streaming past me. Meanwhile, it’s like my feet have been set in concrete.
Peter’s right. No matter how many years you’ve put in, there’s always something new to learn in your classroom. I’ve been teaching for 29 years and I’m still working on getting it right.
It does make me wonder, though. In 2016, who is going to want to wait 29 years or 9 years or even 9 months for a teacher to really get a handle on this job? People get impatient if it takes more than a half second for a page to load on the computer. I know I do.
I don’t think the pace, the rhythm, the ebb and flow of human life is necessarily compatible with the demands of the technology we’ve become so enmeshed in. A glue trap of a different sort, for real, I guess.
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What Peter said.
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In my recurring teacher dream, I’m somehow a student in my own class among my own current students, and someone else is teaching.
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I always dream I’m in a room that is L shaped — and from where I am teaching I can’t see half my students.
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Now THAT’S an interesting dream.
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How old were your students?
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high schoolers, 9-12
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Let’s see…what would my students have been doing? Assuming that I wasn’t upfront trying to “lecture,” there would be a contingent on their phones, a few sleeping, some working on an assignment due in the next class, but the majority would be doing what they were supposed to do. Now if it was during the first few weeks of classes…that would be a different story. I taught special ed reading and language arts to high school kids my last three years of teaching. Since I was an oldish, middle class,white woman in a majority minority school in a poor community, I had no street creds. It took a little time to build a relationship of respect and trust. I would have been very worried about that L-shaped room and would have quickly been stationed in that crucial corner. 🙂 Funny how your dream seems like a metaphor for how difficult it has become to teach.
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You understand this anxiety well; I had to pair this normal (impossible) stress with the fact that our district’s low-income schools were so invaded by outsiders coming in to “fix” us all that I never knew from year to year which room I might be expected to use…
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I’e been teaching high school since 1983. For may years, I had the “classic” no-lesson-plan, kids-out-of-control, no materials kids of dreams. Since the de-form er, though, I also am having the L-shaped AND multi-level room dream in which I can see only some of my students. I also dream of finding myself in a science lad instead of an English classroom, of not being able to access needed textbooks, and– strangest of all– the disappearing room. It was there yesterday, but today it’s turned into a restaurant of a shoe store!
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*or a shoe store
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