In my last post, I wrote about educational scarcity and how small wins keep me going—but also how depressing these small wins can be when I consider how far we have to go in pursuit of just, humanizing schools. In that post, I focused on the possibility of progress—even minor progress—to energize. But now, I want to focus on how it feels when the small wins aren’t enough to restore my faith in institutions. Yes, this small missive into the void will be a little/lot self-indulgent as I work through what I have started calling the “institutional malaise” that often plagues me while I’m working in public schools. But I do hope that my wrestling with the institutional muck might also be useful for others who struggle with the same sense of futility in the face of how much more and better our students and teachers need and deserve.
Attempts to untangle schools’ knots leads to institutional malaise
What I call “institutional malaise” is the sinking feeling I get when I start to talk through an educational problem with a colleague or student and we can see no end to the layers of change that need to happen in order to solve the problem or make schools the humanizing space that students need. For example, in a recent conversation with colleagues, we were discussing the 40% failure rate in a course that most freshmen take in our school. The students who attend regularly and complete the work are doing well. But what about those who attend but do not complete the work (perhaps 20%)? And those who don’t attend regularly (another 20%)? That’s a lot of failure, and it leads us all to feel the weight of failing our students.
Certainly, there are personal responsibliity choices that could help some students, and certainly, some students in any course may fail despite the best efforts of both students and educators. But when 40% of our students are failing a foundational course, we have a larger problem (or several) to address. And this is not just a problem at our high school; it’s similar across our district. (Is it similar in other schools like ours? I’d like to investigate.) The numbers are large enough to tell us that there are fundamental problems with the way we’re doing school. If we don’t point the finger at our systems, then we would be blaming the students—and no educator I work with truly blames the kids. We know our students have brilliance and potential…but somehow we and our systems are not built to help students capitalize on their innate abilities.
There are so many pieces to this problem (and most problems) in our schools: we could and should consider changes to curriculum, pedagogy, intervention systems, school schedules, socioemotional programs, nutrition and foundational needs, transportation, and/or our grading system. Truly, they are all probably partially of the solution. Where to begin? How do all the pieces interact? It’s like trying to untangle a knots in the world’s largest ball of yarn, where every tug frees one knot and creates another.
It’s moments like these when I want to go all Wild, Wild Country: wouldn’t it be great to leave our current school systems behind, maybe even bulldoze them to the ground, buy some land in Oregon, and create a utopian experiment in education where every student’s needs and interests are the drivers of learning? Of course, dystopian conclusions usually result from idealistic attempts at utopias (…Rajneeshpuram, I’m looking at you), so that’s why I’m still plugging away in public schools, trying to band together with others to prop up our educational house of cards. And that’s why sometimes the futility and enormity of it all just plain gets to me. It keeps me up at night, drags me down during the day, and leaves me feeling like I could never do enough.
My dad would say, “I told you so!” He is a farmer, and he’s always said that the best kind of work is owning your own business and working for yourself. At one point all of his kids were working for major institutions: one of my brothers worked for a major religious institution, the other worked for the U.S. government, and I was (and still am) working in public schools. Perhaps it’s telling that I’m the only one of my siblings who is still working for a major social institution.
Ok, so that’s the malaise that plagues me. But the good news is, I’ve recently been inspired by some philosophers to try to begin shifting my mindset in a way that will—I hope—help me combat this sinking feeling of never enough, so far to go. And I hope it might resonate with other fellow educators who are collaborating for change, justice, and the kind of culturally sustaining schools that our students deserve.
Two problems with telic activities (Or, two reasons to curb my to-do list addiction)
I recently had a two-person book club with one of my colleagues, based in our shared wonderings about this sort of midlife malaise that we’ve both been feeling. In MIT philosophy professor’s Kieran Setiya’s book Midlife: A Philosophical Guide and his more recent book Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, my colleague and I were both most struck by Setiya’s call to find meaning in life by shifting one’s thinking from telic, or goal-driven pursuits, to atelic pursuits that are done not to achieve a specific end but for their own sake.
What? Shift away from goal-driven thinking? What does that mean for my love of to-do lists, planners, and habit trackers? Well, Setiya describes philosophers’ explanations of the two conflicting ways that telic pursuits can harm us. As I think about my list of things to do, perhaps it energizes me and gives me focus while I’m working on it, but what happens if (let’s be honest: when) I don’t finish everything on my list today or this week? I feel like a failure, I’m frustrated by my inability to accomplish my goals, and the list becomes ever more daunting as I add things to do for tomorrow or next week.
Or, if I do finish everything on my list, how do I confront the emptiness that remains? What is my purpose if I check off all the things on my list, especially those that have consumed my hands, heart, and head for a long time? Truly, I rarely feel this sort of emptiness because my list tends to be never-ending…but this emptiness, this bewildering “What’s next for me?” has certainly been part of my experience after major achievements like completing my dissertation or experiencing other successful individual or collaborative endeavors. I just spent my last years, months, or weeks working hard for something, and when I’ve finished or achieved it…who am I without that work?
These two struggles, the failure of incomplete tasks and the disorienting emptiness that follows completed tasks, are why Setiya and his philosophical precursors tout the importance of focusing on atelic activities. Because they are more process-centered, they can’t be crossed off a list, and they can be endlessly fulfilling every time we engage in them. Striving for fulfillment rather than accomplishment helps avoid the dissappointments that come with telic pursuits.
But here’s where I’m stuck: what might it mean to shift my mindset to atelic activities at work in public schools? Since work is inherently goal-driven—I’ve been hired specifically to work with teachers to pursue their own professional goals to improve teaching and learning—how/can I find atelic pursuits that fuel me, rather than drain me or leave me searching for the next mountain?
Finding an atelic mindset while working for justice in schools
I have felt this chronic, low-level failure-to-complete-the-list depression almost every day of my adult life. In my work, this buildup of incomplete telic goals adds to my feelings of institutional malaise, my sense that schools are immune to substantive change. Even if I collaborate with this teacher to create an authentic, identity-centered project or to support their desire for more student-centered classroom discourse or to hone their ability to differentiate for student needs, there’s still so much work to be done! Although I’ve made some changes to my mindset and my listing processes over the years, there’s something about the mental shift that Setiya and his philosophical ancestors suggest that feels different.
The shift would mean trading my mindset that my job is a collection of telic activities to complete for a new mindset in which my work is a long-term, atelic collaborative commitment to justice and humanization. In my work, I strive to collaborate with and ally myself with other people committed to anti-oppressive education and school reform. These are change-oriented committments that focus on making schools more equitable and justice-driven spaces that honor and humanize every person in the community. And unless I believe that there is a state of perfect equity and justice that is possible to reach, these goals will always be atelic. They are and will always be ongoing.
Follow me through a few if-thens that help me come to terms with the ongoing, unfunished, always-becoming nature of working in schools:
- If I believe that my own journey toward being an antiracist and anti-oppressive co-conspirator for justice will never be finished,
- then I also need to accept that the work I do with teachers and students will also never be finished.
- If I truly embrace schools as a site and source of human growth and change…
- then I guess I also need to embrace the always unfinished, becoming nature of the human beings (myself included) within our schools.
- If public schools are all about serving, supporting, and nurturing our fellow human citizens in the hope of creating a stronger local and global society
- then I need to acknowledge that these goals are about constant improvement, not about finding some elusive utopian endpoint.
- If I believe that each person a school system serves and will someday serve has unique needs, interests and experiences that demand unique approaches to education,
- then I also need to embrace the beautiful range of human stories as the joyful reason for the ongoing nature work as much as it is the source of the work’s complexity.
- If I embrace the fact that neither I nor any other educator could possibly concoct a perfect school system that can always respond to humanity’s every-changing needs,
- then maybe I can let go of the arrogant belief that I could ever concoct a perfect to-do list that could quench my desire for change, improvement, and a more humanizing education system—a desire I share with countless other educators, parents, and students.
In short, I need to accept that the essence of daily work is inherently atelic. I will always be banding together with others to learn from and work with and strive forward with fellow humans. And that work will certainly involve some hefty lists of things to do each day. But crossing them off will never mean the end of the collective pursuit of humanizing education.
My arrogance in mistaking atelic work for telic tasks
Writing through the knot of institutional malaise that has been growing in my chest these past few weeks has helped me realize that this knot’s source is my own well-meaning but toxic arrogance and self-importance. Woe is Kate, who sees, like a doomed Cassandra, just how far we must go to create the schools we need! Woe is Kate, who sees and feels the frustration of chronic injustice and dehumanization in public schools (never mind that Kate observes, rather than experiences most of said inustice and dehumanization)! When I wax pessimistic about the state of schools, the enormous complexity of changing systems, it’s sort of back-handed way of saying, “Look at me, I see a long list of things to change in schools, and if only people would just let me complete my list, I could deliver the schools we need!”
This is, of course an exaggeration: I truly do not believe that I have the all answers for school reform, and I hope that I don’t present myself as this sort of know-it-all savior. I honestly welcome feedback if you know and work with me. But when I lament the impossibility of change, when I go down the depressive rabbit holes that inspired this post, I am diverting time and energy away from honoring the students I want to serve and the teachers and other educators with whom I should be collaborating. I am centering myself, rather than the work.
And so I’m going to acknowledge and accept this depressive moment/season/tangent because I am working hard to accept how I feel, and because I think everyone has moments or seasons of disillusionment in the pursuit of hard things.
And then get back to work. Back to the work of joining and building coalitions of justice-minded colleagues and community members. Back to work with and for my fellow citizens, from whom I have so much to learn. And that is an atelic joy, an endlessly and maddeningly fulfilling pursuit.
Kate Lechtenberg, PhD 