Communities of one sort or another are found in the literature of many disciplines and are used to explain any number of things: linguists examine language in terms of speech communities, while composition researchers write of discourse communities. Linguists have advanced various definitions of communities, but Stanley Fish's "Is There a Text in This Class?" shifts the focus from interpreting and producing speech to interpreting and producing written texts. Although Fish insists that texts are written before they are read, his theory is aimed at literary criticism and at the act of reading as determined by interpretive communities. When we try to communicate with members of a different community we have to deal with the fact that they use language in different ways, for different purposes. Educators occupy a special position as the experts in various fields--not to mention as representatives of the academic community at large, with its attendant values, methods, beliefs, and even disputes. Students have their own areas of expertise, but they often do not think like their teachers, who need to remember that they are not teaching students to think or speak or write, but rather to think, speak, or write to new communities and in other contexts. (NKA)