Communities that shape our identities

What do you do?

Where do you work?

What are you involved in?

Questions of identity are common place when you meet someone new. Why do we ask identity questions? It is something I have wrestled with in the past. Yet, they seem to be easy surface level questions that we all default too. There are many elements that shape our identities. Here are a few:

• Career or job
• Family
• Beliefs
• Education
• Culture
• Communities

Though our identities are complex, I am going to narrow this post to how communities of practice shape our identities. There are many different types of communities of practice from a book club to church. In a community of practice there is both the individual and the collective part of the group.  People interact with others in the community and learn and participate. These interactions and belonging to the community shapes both the group and the individual identity. 

Etienne Wenger, author of Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity and researcher from the Institute for Research on Learning discusses identity in a community of practice.  He states, 

"Who we are lies in the way we live day to day, not just in what we think or say about ourselves, though that is of course part (but only part) of the way we live."

What are the day to day experiences and communities you are apart of that shape you? 

I think about how my colleagues at my school have shaped my identity as a teacher. I am a more compassionate and passionate educator because of the interactions with other inspiring educators and administrators. 

Each community that we participate in has the power to influence our identity. This makes me think of the advice the high school counselors often give incoming freshman students. Get involved. Join a club, try a sport, and participate in school events. I think that advice may be something even as adults we could use because belonging to a community shapes our identity.