When I first started teaching, I had anxiety dreams. I would show up without my materials, without a plan.
All these years later, I’ve gained confidence. I showed up without my book once; it was fine. Classes have gone off track, productively or not, and I got us back on track.
I’ve improvised an activity for the class to do so I could leave with one student, who was in such crisis she needed to see a mental health professional right that second.
My dreams have to work harder to throw me.
Now, if I have a work anxiety dream, I show up to a class that isn’t mine–in a subject I don’t know–but I’m somehow expected to teach. In the last one, I looked at a board covered in Chinese logograms and turned to the class. “Look, I’m obviously not your teacher.” And then I woke up.
But not all teaching dreams are about anxiety. In many, I’m just doing my job. I’ve woken up having given a whole lecture I had planned to dream students. And then I experience deja vu when I do it for real.
But today, I woke up from a dream of creating modules in Canvas, filling page upon page, converting what I would say to what they would read.
I’d prefer the anxiety dream.
