DREAM ON

EDUCATING CHILDREN TO USE DREAMS

 

Caroline Beard DeClerque

Pinehurst, North Carolina

 

For some time now I have been interested in helping children learn to use the content of their dreams. I would like them to feel comfortable with the content of their unconscious minds and to strengthen their self-images. A healthy child, whose visions are of competence and power, will act according to that image. Everyone must struggle throughout life to overcome dependency, take on responsibility, and form concepts of his own. And since dreams are one indicator of how we feel about all this, the opportunity to act out the dream, or re-dream it in fantasy, looking for creative solutions, increases the possibility that the dreamer will have greater control and confidence in future dreams. Because of this, I have wanted to take advantage of this learning cycle to promote children's growth.

I needed to test my assumptions, write about my work, and see if it could be replicated by others, because my teaching style seems to be unique to me and constantly changes as my awareness increases. I feel that there is no right way to teach dreams, but that the importance of dreams can be verified with different approaches. I looked for a place to do this dreamwork and found that the Mead School in Greenwich, Connecticut, welcomed me as a volunteer.

The Mead School is a fine, independent place of learning. It has its own unique flavor of the open classroom philosophy. The children freely select a required number of workshops to supplement the basic curriculum. Two years ago, my dream workshop was one of those offerings. Since, in many respects, the students were my teachers and I was their student, and we were all volunteers, an ideal learning climate existed.

In my role as teacher, I faced the problems of any classroom, but with one fundamental difference. These children  could  choose  whether  or  not  to  sign  up  for  the