Over the course of a year, a community has to develop a complex network of shared values. What's most important in my notion of a community, though, is a feeling of "us-ness," a recognition that we are a group with certain experiences and values not shared by anyone who is not us. The people outside the door are "others," and they are the ones we are writing for, the audience of evaluators against whom we are checking "our" work. Often, when my efforts to create communities in my classroom fail, it's because the class and I never really congeal into a group by performing for people who are not part of "us." We need to be aware of the others "out there" in order to be able to work for common purposes.