Teacher Nightmares

Even thirteen years after retiring from Southern Methodist University, I still dream about the second-floor classroom where most of our music-history classes took place. My memories of teaching at SMU are delicious ones. But the dreams I have about those years come sometimes as nightmares, highlighting the iconic moments all teachers face.

“Teacher-nightmares” fall into predictable categories. Colleagues tell me their worst dreams involve either scary versions of student-professor (or professor-dean) interactions, or mountains of grading that never diminish, no matter the effort expended (Sisyphus, anyone?).

But my recurring nightmares involve being unprepared.

Throughout my career, despite always having a surplus of lecture material, I fretted about being unprepared. So it’s not surprising that my teacher-nightmares always involved standing in front of the class with nothing to say.

These dreams fall into two categories. In Category A, the new semester is beginning. I walk into class, only to realize that I have no syllabus to distribute. This may sound trite, but students (particularly in the arts) are meticulous planners. They have to be, since their schedules consist of a complex web of lessons, rehearsals, performances, and auditions. Trust me, they want to see a syllabus.

Still, Professor Carol without a syllabus? I obsessed over my syllabuses, to the point of adjusting them on the way to the copy room. Yet, in the nightmares, I either frantically paw through towers of filing cabinets in my office, hoping to find random syllabuses from previous years, or I stand there, shamefaced, stammering an excuse as to why I have nothing to offer. Category A dreams always end in a cold sweat.

Category B nightmares involve me forgetting to make up a final exam. I walk in a room full of students who are tensely poised to begin an exam. But I have no test to pass out.

Two nights ago I had a particularly vivid version of this dream. I awoke stunned, looking around with a desperate hope that, indeed, it was a dream. Phew. It was.

Still, it’s an odd dream to me, and I often wonder what it means. I arrived at every test with thick exams pouring messily out of my arms onto the surface of the big metal desk. Exams were, to me, a significant event. In fact, I found making up exams to be a never-ending source of fascination. The process was as much a test of myself as it was of the students.

Some professors give the same exams every year, but I never understood that. Each group of students is different. Each semester flows differently. Reading lists change. The repertoire one highlights changes. And, most significantly, my curiosity about different aspects of a topic changes. How can the exams stay the same, semester after semester?

Now to be fair, it isn’t easy to make up a test. Not a good test, at least. In my first semester at SMU, I felt insecure about my methods of creating tests. As December neared, I approached an astute senior professor of music therapy, Dr. Charles Eagle, at our Faculty Club. (Some of you remember this magnificent man.) I felt silly, to be sure, but his exceptionally kind nature gave me the courage to spit out the question: “Tell me, Dr. Eagle: how does one make up a good final exam?”

Since Eagle had taught more than 30 years at this point, I expected a chapter-and-verse answer that would leave me thoroughly enlightened. Instead, he gave me his famous quizzical smile and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Well, I don’t really know. I’m still figuring it out.”

My mouth dropped. Was he joking? No. He was relaying a truth that stood me in far better stead than any formula could, namely, that each class is an adventure. Each course, an on-going creation. So the events that mark the end of each course (term papers, presentations, exams) will always be new.

His advice gave me a new confidence, and the rest is history. Of course, I still apologize to the sophomore class I tortured with a particular final exam. Because my exams were notoriously extensive, I promised these students they could take as much time as they wished. Some took five hours. Trust me, that never happened again.

Like all teachers, I look back on such moments with a smile, even if it’s an embarrassed smile. But with such rich memories, why do I still have recurring nightmares about teaching?

The answer is simple. Throughout my life, I was guided by teachers who cared deeply about the subject matter and about the individual students who passed through their classes. And they taught me to care deeply in the same way.

And when things matter, we dream about them. So, let the nightmares come, because they remind me of how grand and meaningful the whole adventure has been. And continues to be.

Postscript

After I shook off the aforementioned nightmare, I recalled what I would have done, if faced with such a situation in real life. Looking directly at my wide-eyed students, I would have said: “Surprise! For today’s test, I would like you to write out the exam you wish I were handing you. Use any format you wish to represent the material you’ve learned. Delve to whatever degree of depth you can in the allotted time.”

I actually did give exactly that type of test on several occasions. To be fair, I gave warning that I might do such a thing. That warning alone caused the students to study in a more creative manner.

Because here’s one more truth: a person cannot ask good, probing questions without having a grasp on the material. If a student can lay out a subject in terms of  terminology, chronology, fill-ins and matching, plus discussions, then that body of material is indeed mastered. An exam becomes primarily an exercise to show that mastery.