Why you can’t change the system from within.

Oh, I tried.

This is why teachers burn out.

When I was in my 20s, I thought that’s how change happened: you push against the system and eventually it will change from within.

So, twenty-five years ago, driven by a vision for a thriving people and planet, and prepared with my critical analysis, my creativity, and my energy, I started teaching in the public schools, hoping to be a catalyst for change.

I loved my years in the classroom… until I didn’t. I taught for twelve years before I had to admit defeat: the system was incapable of evolving to serve the needs of the students I served. Without a fundamental transformation of the system itself, no individual effort, no matter how inspired or tireless, could be enough.

“The system is bigger than the individual.”
-Jan Jacob Stam

It wasn’t until I began training in Family and Systemic Constellations in 2012 that I started to understand how systems truly operate. One teacher in particular, Jan Jacob Stam, a master systemic constellation facilitator and organizational change consultant based in the Netherlands, helped me see how systemic change works.

Here are four principles I learned:

1. The system is bigger than the people who operate it. Systems perform the functions they were designed for and have built-in defense mechanisms to maintain that function.
   
   This is where I went wrong. My personal mission has always been about thriving and human potential. The educational system, by contrast, was designed to produce workers for the marketplace. Even a large group of visionary teachers, plus a couple of administrators thrown in for good measure, can’t retrofit a complex system to serve an entirely different function.
   
   Why? Because the system’s design is embedded in every input, output, and relationship within the system. The system’s defenses are not thugs standing at the door; they are structural. Consider how closely the educational system is tied to the economic system. Even if you manage to create local shifts at your school, eventually you’ll run into immovable boundaries - like how funding works - and realize that the system isn’t budging.
   
   So, what can be done from within?
   

2. The individual can make the system more efficient.
   
   We see this in teachers who have optimized their instruction to generate strong outcomes defined by the system, such as high test scores.
   

3. Creative people within the system can evolve it into a more enlightened version of itself.
   
   In this case, individuals enlighten the original intention to its highest expression. This is what we see in the efforts of most “21st Century, Future of Education” schools. They are still preparing students for college and work, but with more creativity and care.
   

4. But when you’re called to a greater intention - one the system cannot fulfill - there is only one choice: You must leave the old system and join or build a new one.
   

Wondering if you’re at step four?

To borrow a line from a speech to performing arts students:

“If you can do anything else, do it. There are easier paths. But if you wake up every morning knowing there is nothing else you can do except follow your passion, you are in the right place.”

Share this with your teacher friend who’s trying to figure out why they feel so burnt out.

Aitabé is the creator of Sensethinking, a pedagogy of intuition+intellect.
Explore courses at sensethinking.com