Need and Want

I’ve been thinking about last week’s mantra, What matters? As often happens when I think about anything, it gets more complicated.

In this case, I’m thinking that the answers to the question what matters? can generate two more questions:

What is needed?

What is wanted?

I use the passive voice because both questions can be further divided into

What do I need to do? (That is, what is required of me?)

What do students need from me? (That is, how am I going to fulfill these requirements for the students?)

What do I need? (That is, what will make it possible for me to do all this?)

(What outside forces are pulling me?)

And then, of course, there are these questions:

What do I WANT to do?

What do I NOT want to do?

What might the students want to do?

(What internal forces are pulling me and them?)

And, finally:

How do these answers map onto those answers (the ones about need)?

See what I’m saying? It gets complicated quickly. (Sorry. That’s just how I roll.)

But so interesting!

What if what is needed is not what is wanted? What if what I need to do — run an online Teacher Support Group, say, or teach a synchronous class on apartheid — is not what I want to do — say,

bake a cake

and eat the whole thing? Out of stress and an unshakeable sense of helplessness?

What matters then?

I of course cannot say for sure. But I can suggest that blending need with want — and tempering want with won’t — might get you closer to what matters.

To what’s authentic. And possible. And compelling. And meaningful. And transformative. And fun. And closer to

what’s realistic.

For you. For your students. In this moment. In this time.

Your mantra for the week, then: Go for what’s realistic right now.