The first nightmare.

Anyone who is a fellow teacher will understand "the nightmare." It comes in many forms prior to the start of the school year, succeeding to frighten the newbie teacher out of a carefully, well thought out, and well planned intrepid first day. Heading into my forth year I'm well familiar with the nightmare, it usually rears itself within the couple of weeks prior to the start of school, repeats itself in seven or eight different forms, and usually goes away by the end of the first week. It's the dream where you can't control your classroom.

A high school lecture style classroom was the stage of my dream; featuring eighty or so formidable looking high schoolers. (The rational personal will note here that I do not actually teach high school, nor is my classroom ever larger than 30 or so students.) They yelled, turned desks over, tormented other students and, as is the common theme in the nightmare, refused to listen to the soft spoken, kind, and reposeful teacher (me) trying to gather order. In some variations of this dream, as was the case last night, an experienced faceless teacher looms over the newbie glaring down over bifocals in disgust at this mockery of an educational environment.

Upon waking the details were fuzzy, but the feelings very real....welcome to the start of the new school year.