I'm studying to become a teacher. The dream is nothing new to me.
I started out with a relatively plain room. It had white walls and yellow carpeting. Trains and sailboats were the primary decorations. There came a time when my mom asked me if I wanted to get a wallpaper border in 1990. I chose one with school buses.
Soon I began to decorate my room as if it was a classroom. I made makeshift versions of the typical features found in first grade classrooms. I even put my art supplies out on a cart in labeled bins. The books had author call letters on their bindings. I had the colors on my closet door like they do in the classroom--mine were in Spanish on one side and English on the other--and yes, I made them myself with a little help from a Spanish dictionary. I owned multiple sets of flash cards. I had signs that read "welcome to the classroom" and even one that said "fire drill exit: this way" on my walls. And yes, I owned a real gradebook.
I used big white books as pretend desks. My students were little guys I'd cut out of paper. They were diverse--there were boys and girls of varying sizes, races, ages, etc. Some had different eye/hair colors than others, a few wore glasses, they all had their own style, and some had rather strange names. Each one had their own personality. I, of course, was the teacher. I even had a huge list of class rules posted on the side of my dresser. I wrote class newsletters on the computer and even customized the curriculum on the educational programs I had to pretend I was doing something specific that day. Friends who were teachers gave me demonstration textbooks to work from and use as toys.
By the time I moved I was too into sports to really devote much time to pretend play (plus I was older), but the desire remained. Now I go to school to be a teacher.
Real teaching opportunities came up for me as well. I began to tutor in math and other subjects as I hit high school. It started as me helping my friends but later led to study sessions and one-on-one instruction for people I didn't really know that well. In particular, I've done math, history, computer science, and handwriting. This semester you can add a course that's an odd cross between ed, psych, and law to the list.
I like to joke around with some of my friends in education about how I was determined to teach at a young age. I probably had the most bizarre bedroom of anyone on here--I had almost no toys in there except for my laptop, my art supplies, and my tape recorder.