Stupid dreams...

So, I had my first teaching nightmare the other night. It was a combination between having my campers in Messy Art Camp, and teaching for the first time, since it eventually turned into middle schoolers.

I arrived late to work, dressed for class and not camp. I apologized profusely, and got changed, and by the time I came back out they were all established into groups of ages between 5-9. A bus full of kids arrived, and I saw that they were mostly older kids, middle to high-schoolers, mostly African-American (perhaps because my stu-teaching experience was at a Black School, and I know that a lot of my future students will be African American as well?). I was told that since I was going to be an upper-level teacher, I had to do Messy Art Camp with these kids by myself. I was intimidated, but I told myself I could do it. I take them into the YMCA and find a classroom with a bunch of computers inside of it. I ask them to sit down at the computers, and get instantly annoyed when they start playing with the plants, papers, and other random objects found. I yell (which is actually not what I'm like at all), "Everyone in their seats this very instant!" They do it, but I get some dirty looks as a result. No one listens to me, and I'm running from one end of the room to the other just putting out perverbial fires; I haven't even started the lesson! It escalates to the point that a girl is sitting in front of me and won't move until I say "the magic word" which happens to be "please." I say it mockingly, because she's making me angry, and she says, "You know, if you were nicer, we wouldn't be so mean to you." I explode and tell her that if I were any nicer I'd be made of sugar.

At one point in the dream, the classroom was so out of control that a boy threw a basketball at my back. I immediately pointed him into a seat, and walked into Dr. Gilles's office and asked for a sheet to write him up. She asks me why, and I let her know the situation in the classroom. She stares at me and says, condiscendingly, "You know, you should have had control from the instant they walked into the room. It's your own fault." She continues to berate me in front of the students (because her office is attached to my classroom, for some reason), and I hear them going, "HA-HA!" I shoot them dirty glares and procede to take the sheet from Dr. Gilles, and wrote the student up.

A student walked up to me and said, "Are you seriously going to write him up for that? He didn't even do anything, really."

Dr. Gilles yells from the office, "It's because she's an IDIOT!"

I turned to the student and said, "You know, it was an act of complete disrespect. I didn't deserve that at all!"

The student shrugged and said, "If you had been nicer, it wouldn't have happened."

I tell the kid to go and sit down, which he does. I walked over the the kid I was writing up, and sat down to his level and talked to him like I would have normally done! I ask him why he did it; he replies that I wasn't very nice and that I was making him angry. I let him know that if he continues to follow directions for the rest of the day, I'll consider this a warning instead of a write-up, and we'll start anew. He nods and smiles.

From there out the dream ends, and it seems to be okay.

At Fellows Orientation Day today, I told Dr. Gilles about the dream. She laughed and said, "I would have never said that to you! I would have said, 'Now, how could we have handled that situation differently?' and some other questions to help you out. I promise I would have never said any of those things to you!" It was pretty funny. : )

P.s. Thanks for lunch again, Becca!!!