Usually, it was quite easy to predict the future career goals of my students. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" almost always provoked two gender specific responses. Girls: "I'm gonna be a famous singer/actress/dancer." (think Beyonce). Boys: "I'm gonna get drafted to the NBA out of high school or be a rapper. Or both." (think Lebron James and/or Lil Boosie).
As a teacher, I'm supposed to cultivate dreams. Make them attainable as I add to the foundation former teachers have laid, while closing the gap between fantasy and reality. But, I can't dance. Or rap. Or dribble a basketball for longer than a Rhianna refrain. So, I stuck to subject/verb agreement and reading comprehension often fruitlessly linking pop culture fame with the mastery of 6th grade ELA objectives: "Lil Boosie had to learn how to read before he could rap and be discovered for his (cough) artistic talents" or "You know, Lebron James is like the only guy who was drafted to the NBA from high school. Everyone else had to get to college first. You need to pass my class to get out of middle school."
Last night, I dreamed I was destined to run my own business. This seemed like an incredible prophecy, since my business sense is as under developed as my students' courtside skills or ability to pack Madison Square Garden. In my dream, I didn't own a clothing boutique or parfumerie or used book store. No, I owned a shop that made all of its merchandise out of one, natural material: beeswax. My store glistened a light yellow. Chapstick and soap and journals and shoes all waffled the imprint of perfect hexagons (think Burt's Bees on overdrive). My store, no less, was to be named "Mind Your Own".
Impractical. Ridiculous, even. But, it was my dream, and I owned it. And, unlike my students who consciously dream big, stadium-filled dreams that they speak aloud without shame, I let my subconscious tackle the unthinkable, kind of amazing, never-gonna-happen ones. I woke feeling an excited rush. I, a number-phobic-introverted-writer could be an entrepreneur! Perhaps this dream started somewhere in adolescence (running a babysitter's club from Bridget's basement surely tickled a business-bone) and was suppressed by self-consciousness and a need to feel practical. Dreams do eventually surface. So do 'em big. Start in middle school. And tuck them somewhere retrievable for when you're feeling nostalgic or need a reminder that drafts out of high school do (seldom) occur, super-booty-shaking-stardom can happen, and someone has to manage the store that supplies the world with beeswax.
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