Reviewing Communities of Practice, Exploring CoREs

CoREs are inspired by Communities of Practice (CoP), which brings together people who have a common problem or interest and learn how to resolve or improve as they meet regularly. CoPs are characterized by:

• Domain: shared domain of interest, bound by competence of skills within that area;
• Community Role: Members engage in conversations, offer support, share information to help members for immediate application on acute topics and theories; and
• Practice: members develop a shared suite of resources and ways to resolve persistent problems.

Branching from CoPs, CoREs are formed when people who share a somatically overwhelming experience join appreciative spaces of support, care, and aid to identify, consider, and practice skills or pathways of survival, liberation, or healing.

CoRE characteristics include:

• Experience Attraction: increased awareness of collective experience; unsure of community identity. Potential members may be unsure of/curious about next steps or if there are skills to gain or apply;
• Resonance Impact: members share somatic effects and impacts and they seek regulation and validation. Members also offer affirmation, care, and perspective so that the group can focus on survival, recalibration, escape, or recovery; and
• Contextual Practices: practices may be non-clinical and are trauma and/or somatic system-contingent. Due to the nature of some experiences, problems may not resolve. Incremental and non-linear improvements are accepted and validated.

CoREs offer curated sessions with guides who have expertise in facilitating self-preservation skills and interrupting adverse physiological responses to events that are familiar to the group. These sessions have two purposes:

• Cognitive: dedicated time for members to identify and practice self-preservation skills; and
• Somatic: space to slow down and reset any somatic survival signals (e.g., fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop).

Identifying and inviting guides to CoREs creates practical and tangible opportunities for activating collective care. To date, invited guides include social workers, licensed professional counselors, career coaches, communication experts, and organizational development leaders.

CoRE Considerations

CoREs can help address obstacles that library workers who are navigating low-morale experiences (workplace harm) may encounter, including expectations of silence and isolation.

Workplace harm often demands silence about harmful individuals, groups, and organizations. These expectations of silence are compounded in the “small world” of the LIS field. As a result, even survivor communication networks may be approached with trepidation. While these networks help to identify (potentially) harmful workplaces, they may not offer needed skills of in situ survival or escape. CoREs offer language that helps members talk about what is happening (or has happened) to them, which in turn offers a foundational level of validation and relief.

Harmed library workers are often isolated, and it may be especially difficult for this group to find others to connect with- particularly in their own workplaces or local professional communities. CoREs offer members a sense of belonging without having to explain or justify what may have happened to them.

CoRE Impacts

I began this work during the COVID-19 Pandemic, collaborating with colleagues to support Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) working in libraries at that time. The original event was so popular that it spawned successive events during the Pandemic. Since then, I’ve continued this work by offering two events specifically for library workers who are navigating low-morale experiences. Attendees to these later events shared,

“Being in community with people who have shared similar experiences of trauma, burnout, and recovery makes me feel less isolated and more moored in reality.”

“I see that my use of voice has increased since I did the last [event]. Connecting to my values has helped with an anticipatory leadership change on my campus.”

“I found [the event] very powerful and touching. I learned vocabulary to express lived experiences and tools to self-advocate, self-reflect, and self-soothe.”

“I need to keep hearing about it for it to stick in my brain. Priming and training by exposure to thinking about it maybe (hopefully).” 

“This allowed me to think about the ways in which I’ve experienced and perpetuated harm and how I want to start correcting this including setting more intentional breaks, talking about boundaries with my team and making this a cultural shift, using somatic practices in an upcoming division-wide retreat and using time in this retreat to talk about grief.”

Next Steps

CoRE session feedback encourages me to continue offering CoRE opportunities and collaborating with other leaders and practitioners who are committed to improving library workplace culture and, more importantly, supporting library workers. Areas that help me refine my approaches include trauma-informed approaches, polyvagal theory, critical hope praxis, growth-mindset and emotional hygiene practices, and more.

How would you apply a CoRE? Is there something you’re doing already that may fit within this framework? What have the results been so far?

Hero image photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash.“Care and affirmation …are the foundation of love.”—bell hooks