Community as a Core Value: Cultivating Belonging and Shared Purpose in K–12 Education
- Greg Mullen
- Jul 6
- 7 min read
Community as a Core Value reflects more than just how well people get along. It speaks to the deeper, structural interdependence of individuals within a group. The concept of "community" is to bind individuals into relationships of shared purpose, shared belonging, and shared responsibility.
In an educational setting, this serves as the foundation for collaboration, empathy, and the ethical work of nurturing the whole child. At its best, this concept of community helps both staff and students see themselves as part of something larger than themselves while supporting their individual growth.
In this article, we explore Community as a Core Value, examining how its dynamic dimensions shape belonging, responsibility, and shared purpose, and how these dimensions influence the expression of virtues and vices in educational settings.
Two Dynamic Dimensions of Community
To understand how Community as a Core Value can challenge schools to foster connection, not as an optional program but as a practice woven into the fabric of everyday life, we can start by exploring two defining dimensions for how belonging is understood, built, and sustained.
Intent of Agency
This dimension describes why people engage in community:
Collective Action → Community is understood as a shared effort toward common goals and collective well-being. People see themselves as responsible for what the group achieves together.
Individual Development → Community is valued for how it supports personal growth and individual well-being. The focus is on nurturing each member’s potential.
Sphere of Influence
This dimension describes where the boundaries of community are drawn:
Focused Network → Community is built through deep, local connections and relationships — tight-knit groups that prioritize place-based belonging and mutual support.
World-Wide Connection → Community extends beyond immediate circles to include global citizenship and responsibility for shared challenges that affect humanity and the planet.
When combined, these dimensions form four distinct orientations toward community, each representing a different perspective toward how community can be cultivated and sustained.
The Four Quadrants of Community
Principled Builder (Collective Action + Focused Network)
Integrity here means nurturing a strong, place-based community where everyone works together toward shared goals. Belonging is built through collaboration and shared responsibility within a clearly defined group.
Example: A school fosters collective service projects and mentorship programs tied to the immediate neighborhood, encouraging students and staff to invest in their local community.
Mission-Aligned Unifier (Collective Action + World-Wide Connection)
Here, integrity is about uniting people in collective action for global good. The community focuses on large-scale shared purposes and sees itself as part of a broader movement for change.
Example: A school implements global service-learning projects or sustainability initiatives, encouraging students to see their community as part of a worldwide network of action.
Ethical Connector (Individual Development + Focused Network)
Community is understood as supporting personal growth through strong, local relationships. Integrity comes from ensuring that individuals feel seen, valued, and nurtured within a caring, close-knit group.
Example: A school prioritizes small advisory groups, peer mentoring, or community circles where each student’s development is supported by trusted relationships.
Pragmatic Collaborator (Individual Development + World-Wide Connection)
Integrity is expressed by creating flexible, inclusive spaces where individuals can grow while also contributing to global conversations and initiatives. The focus is on balancing personal development with broader connection.
Example: A school encourages individual student-driven global projects, such as virtual cultural exchanges or independent research addressing world issues.
How Community Shapes Virtue and Vice
Community as a Core Value profoundly influences how six virtues are expressed through our behaviors and interactions with others. Each quadrant represents a distinct perspective that guides how each virtue shows up in efforts to build and sustain belonging, responsibility, and shared purpose.
For example, in the Principled Builder quadrant, virtues like courage and temperance may shine through steadfast commitment to collective duty, but risk becoming rigidity or exclusion of outsiders when unbalanced. In the Mission-Aligned Unifier, magnanimity and pride help rally shared purpose on a larger scale, but can tip into arrogance or neglect of local ties. In the Ethical Connector, friendliness and temperance foster deep, trusted relationships, yet may drift toward over-accommodation or avoidance of broader engagement. And in the Pragmatic Collaborator, wit and magnanimity fuel creative, globally minded growth, but may spread efforts too thin or weaken local roots if not kept in check.
Virtues remain balanced when our approach to community is grounded in reflection, purpose, and moral clarity. Without this, even the best intentions can slip into vice, whether through excess, deficiency, or misplaced focus. The chart below illustrates how Community as a Core Value shapes the expression of each virtue across Community's four quadrants, and highlights where the risks of vice can emerge.
Virtue | Principled Builder | Mission-Aligned Unifier | Ethical Connector | Pragmatic Collaborator |
Courage | Balanced: Stands up for shared local responsibilities. Excess: Rigid in defending local norms. Deficit: Avoids confronting local issues. | Balanced: Bold in uniting around global causes. Excess: Overzealous, dismissing local ties. Deficit: Hesitates to engage big challenges. | Balanced: Courage in advocating for individual needs within trusted circles. Excess: Overprotective of individual growth at expense of group needs. Deficit: Avoids speaking up for self. | Balanced: Courage in pursuing personal growth linked to global good. Excess: Spreads too thin, chasing causes without depth. Deficit: Withdraws from global engagement. |
Wit | Balanced: Uses insight to strengthen local collaboration. Excess: Cleverness used to guard local cliques. Deficit: Avoids creative problem-solving in close circles. | Balanced: Applies creativity to unite diverse global voices. Excess: Uses wit to push a single global vision. Deficit: Fails to inspire global connections. | Balanced: Insightful in helping individuals grow through local bonds. Excess: Overcomplicates small community issues. Deficit: Lacks initiative for fresh ideas. | Balanced: Innovates personal paths for global connection. Excess: Overly complex plans without local grounding. Deficit: Misses chances to link growth to global efforts. |
Pride | Balanced: Pride in strengthening local community ties. Excess: Pride turns into exclusionary loyalty. Deficit: Downplays role in local success. | Balanced: Pride in contributing to global causes. Excess: Arrogance about moral superiority on world stage. Deficit: Underestimates global impact. | Balanced: Pride in nurturing personal growth within local relationships. Excess: Self-focus overshadows group belonging. Deficit: Fails to value personal progress. | Balanced: Pride in linking personal goals to global good. Excess: Overidentifies with global causes at expense of self or community. Deficit: Lacks confidence in ability to contribute globally. |
Magnanimity | Balanced: Generous with time and energy to support local group. Excess: Overextends in local duties, risking burnout. Deficit: Withholds help unless benefit is direct. | Balanced: Generous in service to global mission. Excess: Sacrifices too much for distant causes. Deficit: Holds back from global service. | Balanced: Generous support for individual growth within close community. Excess: Overinvests in few individuals, neglecting the group. Deficit: Fails to offer help locally. | Balanced: Generous in promoting personal growth that serves global good. Excess: Overcommitted to causes without local impact. Deficit: Reluctant to share gifts beyond self. |
Friendliness | Balanced: Builds warm, supportive local bonds. Excess: Overly familiar, hard for outsiders to enter. Deficit: Distant or cliquish locally. | Balanced: Builds connections across cultures and borders. Excess: Overreaches, forcing connection without depth. Deficit: Keeps distance from global communities. | Balanced: Friendly in personal connections that nurture growth. Excess: Too focused on close bonds, resists new connections. Deficit: Fails to engage warmly even locally. | Balanced: Friendly in linking personal and global relationships. Excess: Superficial connections spread too wide. Deficit: Misses opportunities to build bridges globally. |
Temperance | Balanced: Exercises restraint in serving local community needs. Excess: Rigid in local traditions, resists new ideas. Deficit: Disregards local norms, creating discord. | Balanced: Steady in balancing global commitment with local responsibilities. Excess: Overcommits globally, neglects home community. Deficit: Shies away from sustained global engagement. | Balanced: Exercises balance in supporting individual growth within community. Excess: Overcontrols personal development paths. Deficit: Lacks follow-through on growth commitments. | Balanced: Adjusts personal ambitions to responsibly engage globally. Excess: Too quick to change direction, losing focus. Deficit: Fails to act beyond personal goals. |
Conclusion: Recognizing Patterns, Not Isolated Moments
Preparing students for the real world means showing them what true community looks like — not through slogans or posters, but through the way we act, the virtues we embody, and the choices we explain. Educators and leaders must implicitly model and explicitly communicate the balanced virtues that sustain community integrity, while guiding students to see how these virtues can tip into vice if left unexamined.
Principled Builder: Demonstrate courage, temperance, and pride in standing together for shared local goals, while guarding against rigidity or exclusion that can arise from overcommitment to tradition.
Mission-Aligned Unifier: Model magnanimity, pride, and wit in uniting around global responsibilities, while helping students see the risks of arrogance or neglect of local ties.
Ethical Connector: Show friendliness, temperance, and courage in nurturing personal growth through local relationships, while watching for over-accommodation or hesitation to engage beyond the familiar.
Pragmatic Collaborator: Encourage wit, magnanimity, and flexibility in supporting individual agency in a global context, while being mindful of spreading efforts too thin or losing local connection.
It is important for educators and leaders to recognize that virtues tip into vice not in isolated moments, but through patterns of behavior repeated over time. One-off instances of imbalance are often exceptions as moments of learning and not signs of a deeper ethical drift. As school leaders, we must help both staff and students see these patterns clearly, without jumping to judgment, and fostering dialogue that builds shared understanding of what sustained, balanced community looks like in action.
By making our reasoning visible, by explaining why certain actions reflect community integrity in context, we can help staff and students internalize the complexities of belonging, contribution, and care at local or global levels. With the ideas in this article, we as leaders can communicate our intention to focus our sphere of influence on the focused network of families in our school's community without suggesting that families cannot express their intent to engage in other communities focused more on world-wide connection. Likewise, we as leaders can more clearly communicate our intent of agency, choosing wih intention to focus more on individual development of our staff and students without suggesting that families cannot engage in collective action beyond the efforts of our school's community.
If such intention is the goal of your school, this article provides a clear, objective framework for internalizing and communicating this intention for developing community with purpose.
Ultimately, this work is essential to whole-child development, equipping young people to navigate a complex world with empathy, responsibility, and clarity of purpose, and to practice virtue with thoughtful intention rather than by learned habits from others alone.
Greg Mullen
July 6, 2025
