i have a dream

on august 28, 1963, dr. martin luther king gave his famous sixteen minutes and twenty-eight second speech on the steps of the lincoln memorial. it was forty years before my first year teaching.

that year, i saw the students self-segregating, as was the case with the community it seemed. long bred hatreds and distrusts has unconsciously worked their way into a younger generation. a pocket of white girls over here, a pocket of black girls over here, a handful of colorblind students starting to break the trend. as the years passed, most of them became colorblind, at least in choosing their friends. i was able to have serious discussions about race relations and history with them. i was often surprised by the poignant responses i got out of the blue with students that made painfully personal connections to the troubles of the jim crow south.

this year, with older students, the poignant thoughts continue. i asked my students to expand upon and revise dr. king's dream today. it's been nearly 46 years since his speech. much has been done, but i see the hope in the younger generation to continue to live out dr. king's words. the common thread running through their speeches were attitudes of peace, acceptance, tolerance, love, and kindness. the broad palette of my students makes me ever hopeful that the progress will continue.

work dreams

work is creeping into my dreams. it happens every year. for about eighty percent of the year, no worries when i walk out that door. i focus on life. outwardly, it would seem the same is true for the last twenty. subconsciously, apparently not the case. right now, assessment insanity at work. my poor 21 munchkins have been subjected to many, many out-of-the-ordinary reading tests one-on-one with me.

"here, read this book out loud. i'm going to listen to you read, and write down everything you say. don't be nervous."

yeah, right. doesn't even faze my high-achieving ones. attention problems. strugglers. yeah, they flip. they read worse than i know they're capable of, and ethically, i can't do a damn thing about it. i've got to call it as i see it, even if the day-to-day reality is far different than what that thirty minutes or less on that one day shows.

my college courses always said, "a test is one piece of information. assessment is ongoing." practice thus far has shown that to be bullshit. if it weren't, wouldn't assessment creep into my dreams year-round?

that's what i thought.

dream catcher

i rarely remember my dreams, and i woke up with my pulse racing at 2:30 last night from a nightmare. i've got no appetite for breakfast right now, and i'm curious about what my dreams from last night meant.

first one, i was climbing with random friends. some climbers, some not. we were deep water soloing and free soloing. crash pads, no ropes, somewhere touristy out west. we were next to a mcdonald's at my apartment. some of the guys were buildering (climbing the building) to my balcony, which was somewhere high up. a friend that'd already made it all the way up was goofing off and fell off the balcony. he hit a cliff on the way down before he settled on the crash pad we were using for our shenanigans. didn't die, but his leg wasn't exactly bending properly. the medical airlift helicopter couldn't land because of a mcdonald's helicopter bringing ronald mcdonald to some kid's birthday party. we were screaming at the chopper, ronald was waving like a goon. they finally went away, and i woke up as they were loading landon into the chopper. interpretation?

second, she and i went to paris on a whim. ran into my parents at some random museum. i tried paying our admission to a clerk that spoke no english and my very limited french was no help. i guess counting to three and saying i don't know won't get you very far after you ask if they can speak english and the answer's no. anyhow, i only had dollars, she was trying to figure out the exchange rate between francs (yes, i know they use the euro now), and disappeared. some other employee took us inside to search for her in the darkened museum gift shop. we never found her, so she took my money and ran presumably. we started checking out the museum, which turned out to be a cross between a car show, a car museum, and the gem exhibit at the natural history museum all crammed in a 12th century castle that had turned into a shopping mall. interpretation?

third, somewhere else in my head. randomly, i was hanging out with tim tebow at some deli that was in his apartment. we became friends because i didn't really care that he was tim tebow. everyone else was falling all over themselves because he was tim tebow. that's all i can remember.

pregnancy

gotcha! i'm not pregnant.

random dream last night. i'm having a party. housewarming or something. lots of people from florida came to visit. a lot of people actually. candler. palmer. clowe. a few exes. a few people i haven't talked to in months or longer. one of the not-forgotten friends was in the dream with his wife, who was pregnant when i left florida. now, in the dream, i apparently didn't know that, and they chose the trip for my party to tell me. i was all excited for them, as i was in real life way back when i found out.

so, i email him this morning when i wake up since i thought it was really strange that he was in my dream. how's life? when's she due? are you a papa yet? he writes back. she had our son. yesterday. at 2am. probably when i was having that dream.

is that weird or what?!