Teacher Dreams and Nightmares

We explore the alleged phenomenon of teachers getting bad dreams and nightmares, more often than everyone else, starting with several engineering teachers' most memorable ones. Do other teachers really get these dreams? Why do they get them? What should they do about them, if anything? Based on a little reading and communication with experts, we developed some preliminary answers to those questions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

● Research on dream content and emotions, "Thematic and Content Analysis of Idiopathic Nightmares and Bad Dreams" (Robert & Zadra, 2014): http://www.journalsleep.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=29326

● Research on dream frequency and themes, "Nightmare frequency and nightmare topics in a representative German sample" (Schredl, 2010): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20229263 book

● Website of Roxanna Elden, author of the book "See Me After Class": http://roxannaelden.com

● The "Disillisionment Power Pack" email series: http://roxannaelden.com/2015/09/announcing-the-new-teacher-disillusionment-power-pack/

● "What are Dreams?", PBS Nova documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/what-are-dreams.html

● Research on the transactional stress model/theory in teachers, "Identification of Elementary Teachers’ Risk for Stress and Vocational Concerns Using the National Schools and Staffing Survey" (Lambert, McCarthy, Fitchett, Lineback, & Reiser, 2015): http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1792

● TeacherPop.org, a teachers' mental health blog: http://teacherpop.org

Our opening music comes from "School Zone (radio edit)" by The Honorable Sleaze. Our closing music is from "Late for School" by Bleeptor. Both are used under Creative Commons Attribution Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Subscribe and find more podcast information at: http://www.k12engineering.net