The negative emotional affects of standardized teaching and learning abound in public schools and work to create a melancholic, shared reality for teachers and students. The authors argue that teachers and students must acknowledge this melancholy and pursue shared inquiry around those emotions in order to help bring about understanding and the potential for institutional change. One organization, Save Our Schools, asked students and teachers to engage in arts-based inquiry and to submit their creations so that they could then be used to educate the public on the harms caused by undemocratic education policies and practices.