Community can be interpreted as isolated pockets, perhaps like separate elements of a larger whole, and there is validity to that. In some ways communities are in the world, but also isolated from it; or at least from the abundance of other peoples who gather around different goals or principals. In the way that communities of professionals are isolated in office buildings, in schools, or wherever they most commonly operate, communities imply some sense of togetherness based on an unifying element. This element which brings one group of people together and seemingly isolates them from others, may not demarcate or draw boarders separating communities as sharply as I previously have thought. The events of this week gave me an expanded way of looking at community. I went to the Jeff Kass workshop organized around his poetry anthology and companion workbook entitled, “Uncommon Core.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday we all gathered around Jeff’s book in Ann Arbor, and around some common goals as well (meeting Common Core State Standards through poetry and lesson building being one). Many of us were from different “lifeworlds” as the phenomenologists might say. We built a community through two days of intimate interactions around the expression of our unique, community influenced “lifeworlds,” through analyzing and writing poetry. A “lifeworld” in other words, is a quirky way of saying being in the world, belonging to different networks, and interpreting the world with our own personal libraries, or mental representations of things. These various perspectives, based within the different organizations from which they came, entered into new associations of people, and all of us, helped build a community around a larger goal. Now I feel as if I belong, not only to a wonderful organization like iO, but a whole movement which links our entire country and has the welfare of students in mind. I have an understanding, even if it is fairly superficial, of teaching methods and experience, and now I should be able to apply that to curriculum development at iO to help writers achieve CCSS in the classroom. My goal this summer, in general terms, is to tie communities together, and isn’t that after all what Inside Out already does? I feel as if my experiences with iO, and it’s partners such as the Neutral Zone (the writing center responsible for organizing the workshop), have involved me in a movement, through which I have realized the goals of my project in a concrete experiential way. Perhaps community is something larger than isolated pockets. Rather, it is the realization of a movement through experience with people. Communities are not like separate states created by drawing imaginary lines. Communities are built around shared goals and sharing experiences. They are perspectives and ideas united through people; they are movements.
