BIO

As a child, TED-Ed Innovative Educator Jacqueline Fernandez-Romero used to cross the US/Mexico border daily to attend school. Today, Jackie is the principal of the Latin American Youth Center Career Academy in Washington, D.C., which provides both a rigorous academic model and career preparation in the healthcare and information technology fields. “Teaching students of color is something that I’ve always been passionate about, especially sparking their interest in the sciences and getting them more involved in STEM,” says Jackie. “As a Mexican American woman, I feel that my experiences are valuable to the population I serve.”

IDEA

For her TED-Ed Innovation Project, Jackie set out to create a documentary about the lives of four students who grew up in the US without lawful immigration status. Many of these students, aka DREAMers, were brought to the US as children in order to escape violence in other countries. As young adults, these students have already overcome many obstacles. Today they dream of continuing their studies and starting careers in nursing, engineering, and computer science. “I have always believed in all my student DREAMers,” says Jackie. “I will continue to embrace my students in love, gather strength from their courage and resilience, and let them know they are not alone, now or ever.”

INNOVATION PROJECT

How do students feel about the current political turmoil over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program? Here’s what some young DREAMers told Jackie:

“Why can’t the President see that we are hardworking students who have earned the right to be in this country?” — student, 22 years old

“I want to live my life one day at a time. I do not want to think that I might have to go back to Guatemala.” — student, 17 years old

“I was really sad when I heard the news regarding DACA. What am I supposed to do? My life is in this country.” — student, 18 years old

“I did not have a choice as a child. I was brought to this country by my parents, who were escaping the violence in EL Salvador.” — student, 24 years old

“I’m a DREAMer, and I’m ok with that, because everything I have ever done is with integrity.” — student, 17 years old

“Undocumented students have been and will continue to be an asset to the United States economy.” — student, 21 years old

Below, read one DREAMer’s story about growing up in the US as an undocumented immigrant.

This student’s dream is to become a nurse:

“I moved to the United States when I was 13 years old. When I came here, I didn’t speak English, and my goal was to speak English after two years. I have been in many different struggles — bullying and discrimination and being made to feel that I was nothing in this country. But I learned English in two years! I have had a lot of experiences that make me strong.

When I first came to the US, it was very difficult. Every night I had bad dreams about monsters coming to kill me. Every morning I would wake up to hear a rat going around near my bed. But you just have to keep going, no matter what. I started to go to the church, and after I became Christian everything changed. Whenever I felt sad or lonely, I prayed. Thanks to God, whenever I needed something, He was there.

Sometimes I feel that my life is impossible, but then I realize that I have been working really hard, and that is what makes me keep going.”

This article is part of the TED-Ed Innovation Project series, which highlights 25+ TED-Ed Innovation Projects designed by educators, for educators, with the support and guidance of the TED-Ed Innovative Educator program. You are welcome to share, duplicate and modify projects under this Creative Commons license to meet the needs of students and teachers. Art credit: iStockPhoto.

In the 3rd millennium BCE, Mesopotamian kings recorded and interpreted their dreams on wax tablets. In the years since, we haven’t paused in our quest to understand why we dream. And while we still don’t have any definitive answers, we have some theories. Here are seven reasons we might dream.

1. In the early 1900’s, Sigmund Freud proposed that while all of our dreams, including our nightmares, are a collection of images from our daily conscious lives, they also have symbolic meanings which relate to the fulfillment of our subconscious wishes.  Freud theorized that everything we remember when we wake up from a dream is a symbolic representation of our unconscious, primitive thoughts, urges and desires. Freud believed that by analyzing those remembered elements, the unconscious content would be revealed to our conscious mind, and psychological issues stemming from its repression could be addressed and resolved.

2. To increase performance on certain mental tasks, sleep is good, but dreaming while sleeping is better.  In 2010, researchers found that subjects were much better at getting through a complex 3D maze if they had napped and dreamed of the maze prior to their second attempt. In fact, they were up to ten times better at it than those who only thought of the maze while awake between attempts, and those who napped but did not dream about the maze. Researchers theorize that certain memory processes can happen only when we are asleep, and our dreams are a signal that these processes are taking place.

3. There are about ten thousand trillion neural connections within the architecture of your brain. They are created by everything you think, and everything you do.  A 1983 neurobiological theory of dreaming, called “reverse learning,” holds that while sleeping, and mainly during REM sleep cycles, your neocortex reviews these neural connections and dumps the unnecessary ones. Without this unlearning process, which results in your dreams, your brain could be overrun by useless connections, and parasitic thoughts could disrupt the necessary thinking you need to do while you’re awake.

4. The “Continual Activation Theory” proposes that your dreams result from your brain’s need to constantly consolidate and create long term memories in order to function properly. So when external input falls below a certain level, like when you’re asleep, your brain automatically triggers the generation of data from its memory storages, which appear to you in the form of the thoughts and feelings you experience in your dreams. In other words, your dreams might be a random screensaver your brain turns on so it doesn’t completely shut down.

5. Dreams involving dangerous and threatening situations are very common, and the Primitive Instinct Rehearsal Theory holds that the content of a dream is significant to its purpose.  Whether it’s an anxiety filled night of being chased through the woods by a bear, or fighting off a ninja in a dark alley, these dreams allow you to practice your fight or flight instincts and keep them sharp and dependable, in case you’ll need them in real life. But it doesn’t always have to be unpleasant; for instance, dreams about your attractive neighbor could actually give your reproductive instinct some practice too.

6. Stress neurotransmitters in the brain are much less active during the REM stage of sleep, even during dreams of traumatic experiences, leading some researchers to theorize that one purpose of dreaming is to take the edge off painful experiences to allow for psychological healing. Reviewing traumatic events in your dreams with less mental stress may grant you a clearer perspective and an enhanced ability to process them in psychologically healthy ways. People with certain mood disorders and PTSD often have difficulty sleeping, leading some scientists to believe that lack of dreaming may be a contributing factor to their illnesses.

7. Unconstrained by reality and the rules of conventional logic, in your dreams your mind can create limitless scenarios to help you grasp problems and formulate solutions that you may not consider while awake. John Steinbeck called it “the Committee of Sleep” and research has demonstrated the effectiveness of dreaming on problem solving. It’s also how renowned chemist August Kekule discovered the structure of the benzene molecule, and it’s the reason that sometimes the best solution for a problem is to “sleep on it”.

And those are just a few of the more prominent theories. As technology increases our capability for understanding the brain, it’s possible that one day we will discover the definitive reason for them; but until that time arrives, we’ll just have to keep on dreaming.

From the TED-Ed Lesson Why do we dream? – Amy Adkins. Animation by @clamanne.

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