I dreamt that I was at a huge school, and it was my first day. This place was enormous... and it was totally disorganized. The kids basically had the run of the school. In my dream, I don't think there was actually any classroom instruction, because the teachers really didn't know what to do.
In one of the hallways (which looked vaguely like HCHS, lol), the teacher showing me around was terrified of the students, even though they appeared to be pretty normal kids. I remember I was telling her "You know, we're older than them, smarter than them, we can run faster and farther than them... well, most of them." (Gee, what a line.)
Then there were other parts of the building, though, which were like a castle, with rooms that were dark and unused. As one teacher said "Hey! Where were you?" He just looked at her sheepishly and said "I was talking to Anna." The teacher said "Who's that, your girlfriend?" which didn't seem entirely appropriate to say. But just then, another kid said "Hey look! There are the Bedtime Boys!"
You should have seen it (not that I really was, but this is still all in my dream)-- in this dark room with a pingpong table, these middle-school-aged boys had totally set up a fort underneath and around the table, and had gone unnoticed for what was probably weeks. They had pillows and cushions and blankets everywhere. The light got turned on, and the boys scrambled to escape. But the other teacher and I tried to get them to stand in a line where we could see them... and then I woke up (thanks Meghan... just kidding!)
Oh, but I forgot to tell you about the playground. The property went for miles, and the school was at one corner of it. There really weren't any structures to play on, just an enormous sheet of old blacktop that desperately needed resurfacing. And oh, the chalk. There were drawings everywhere. Not the "oh, cool, kids are using their imaginations" kind of drawings, it was mostly just lines from here to there, to walk along. (The kids didn't listen, big surprise.) It felt horrible. Blacktop and chalk. These kids just didn't play. I remember wanting to get the whole thing resurfaced and paint some real lines that they couldn't mess with down, and some other things too like four-square or the USA, or something like what I had as a kid, to actually play with.
Then there were the teachers. I kind of mentioned they seemed incompetent, but it was mostly out of fear. But sometimes they were as bad as the kids. There were a group of teachers hanging around a thing that looked like an above-ground pool with no water in it (about the size of a hot tub, but with the shape of half an egg, all rounded with no ladder or steps) and the things they were saying were stupid, joking about this thing with all of these kids hanging around listening (and would probably try it out when the teachers weren't around). Seriously, the maturity of the teachers was hardly more than these students, which seemed to range K-12.
Yeah. Weird, huh? I don't know what this is supposed to tell me, especially going in for my first day on Monday. Thank goodness my placement will be more structured than THIS school. But when I was "there," in my dream, I felt like I knew what the place needed, that it was simply a matter of establishing structure and getting a staff with backbone. The kids weren't all that bad, they just had been running it their way. Interesting.
Well, the smell of cinnamon rolls is getting me moving. :)
Betsy
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