Producing Community

Thank you, everyone, for your wonderful posts about community! I enjoyed reading them all.

It’s important to remember that no two students ever have the same experience in our classrooms, no matter how determined our curriculum is nor how consistent we are with procedures. In that way, community is something that goes beyond shared experience.

We can, in one way, think about groups as being based on shared traits—that is, what is often called "nominal communities." Being a red-head, or a Tigers fan, or even being a man, white, or an American, all of these indicate nominal group membership. I will never know the majority of other people in these groups. What we share is only a fraction of what defines me as a person. We don't really work for each other's good, in any strong sense.

Unfortunately, schools are traditionally little more than nominal communities. They gather young people in one place, often working on the same tasks, but always as individuals. My success is completely independent of yours. I can get an A and the rest, in theory, can all get F's. My good is not tied up with your good.

When we differentiate our instruction and our relationships, we start to welcome genuine learning communities into existence. We do this by knocking down barriers to participation. We do this by showing all students that their participation, their learning, their very being, is valued!

I think the most destructive thing for a classroom is to signal to students that they are all the same. But the second most destructive thing might be to treat them as if they were all different! Community is the nexus where unique individuals find what unites them to others through shared work that is conjointly meaningful.

This, then, is the challenge for schools and classrooms. How can we break down, even just a little, the individualistic mindset. How can we truly cooperative relations, where my success is dependent upon your success—where your success is not a threat to my own. This can only happen when we learn to care for others and the work we are jointly undertaking.

This can only happen when work is authentic, motivating, and requires the skills, abilities and talents of everyone. This requires that students are not only consumers of information, but producers of public goods. We might start to think about how the learning tasks we assign in our classrooms might produce joy and community for others.

When a school choir sings in an assisted care nursing facility, they are producing community. When a science class surveys the communities on their food options, and works to overcome food deserts, they are producing community. When social studies students do oral history with elders, they are producing community.

Community is concomitant of authentic activity. So is character. So are knowledge and skills. This is our challenge as teachers: To go beyond nominal communities towards genuine participatory living.