When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful.

We are interested in others when they are interested in us.

We are interested in others, when they are interested in us.

Students who excel in active listening also contribute much to the formation of community. This is also true of students who may not speak often but when they speak (sometimes only when reading required writing) the significance of what they have to say far exceeds those of other students who may always openly discuss ideas. And of course there are times when an active silence, one that includes pausing to think before one speaks, adds much to classroom dynamics.

We — editors, writers, teachers, publishers — need to do whatever we can to enliven readers, to help create communities for them if we want to continue to have readers at all. Our independent bookstores are the front lines, and many booksellers are fighting the good fight. Here, books stimulate conversation. Conversation stimulates a sense of community. Listening happens. Thinking. The exchange of thoughts.

Think about the little things you enjoy, then turn around and do them for someone else.

If you feel relief when someone asks a question in class, then other students are probably relieved too. Be the one who asks.

If you love it when a friend calls to check in, your friends probably love it too. Be the one who calls.

If it makes your whole day when someone compliments your outfit, other people probably love it too. Give out more compliments.

Enthusiasm is achieved chiefly by means of provocations. In these cases, something inside of us resonates vibrantly with something outside. / The form of the provocation—be it book, music, sporting event, conversation—matters insofar as it might help to us find these sources of resonance.

[T]eachers have to be involved in the community and connected with parents and others who shape the lives of young people. They have to be involved with a whole range of people. They have to bring people together. They have to make sure that students in some way find that the work that they’re doing has something to do with their lives and matters.

This sense of community instilled in me a strong sense of responsibility and the belief that we all have a role to play in uplifting our society. It also fuelled my passion for giving back and contributing to the welfare of others.

re-ignite a spark in the community by motivating our youth to empower themselves in their communication, presentation, leadership and workshop development skills.

It’s quite an obsession to me to communicate at this moment, at this time, with my audience. I don’t only play for them, it’s something I want to give back to them. I feel how each listener in the audience is listening to me, and I feel its warmness, for example, and I give it back to the complete audience. I feel the intensity of hearing, of listening. This is like electricity, and this I give back to the audience. It’s very stimulating.

We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.

We sit here, very different each from the other, until the passion arrives to give us our equality, to make us part of the play, to make the play part of us.

Experience tells me that when there is great concern about cultivating this intrinsic dynamism in the Eucharistic celebration, the way of our communities and of the individual faithful becomes alive and strong.