It's summer, but still I dream of school-- constantly. Sometimes the dreams are full of stress, sometimes they make no sense. Sometimes they are about students, former students, or parents. Sometimes they are about my colleagues being mean to me. Sometimes they are nightmares about my first school. Sometimes I dream of being late to everything or not wearing enough clothing to school. Even in sleep, I cannot escape my job and the anxieties that come with it.
A few years ago, I had one of my more memorable dreams involving two rambunctious students. These two were always finding themselves in the midst of one bad decision after another-- cutting class to play dice in the park, punching their hand through a window, cursing at a teacher, or stealing a custodian's keys and exploring some locked classrooms.
In this dream, I found myself hiding out in my childhood home. Across the street was no longer the tall trees obscuring the rural family homes I grew up next to but a large apartment building representing my current urban lifestyle.
And someone was shooting at me.
Somehow I knew-- it was these two students.
The next day I said to the students, "You know you guys are really stressing me out. I'm even dreaming about you."
When I told them the details of the dream and their failed assassination attempt, they looked at me surprised. "But Jamie, dat's crazy. We would never do that to you. We don't even own AK-47s."
Well, thank goodness for that.
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