As someone who operates within the field of education, I often witness encouragement for educators to optimistically consider what is possible: to imagine, for example, some more equitable or otherwise more socially just future built from the possible present-in short, inspiring possibilities for a different status quo. I wonder what is being asked (of educators, of ourselves) through such encouragement to dwell upon the possible. Oftentimes, these imaginations articulate as nearly clichéd narratives of possibility: teachers encouraging students to imagine a possible future; community members accusing biased administrators of limiting what is possible for their children; students themselves alternating between a belief in circumventing material possibility (“I can be anything”) and utilizing “what’s possible” as an inevitably limiting barrier (“why even try?, it’s not possible”).
