Bishop Carroll High School
Wichita, Kansas
Teacher: Angie Etheredge  

How Community Affects Me
by Jacob Elpers
9th grade

Imagine that a person is in a country where they own a house in the middle of nowhere.  Whenever people need something to be done, people only have themselves and their families to depend on.  Now imagine that a person lives in a huge city and that person is standing on a sidewalk with people of all kinds walking by and even running into the person; but in this place if they need something or have a job to be done, there is always some one that can help.  These are both kinds of communities that we share.  Everyone is surrounded and affected by several communities: the world community, the national community, local community, your nuclear family, your extended family, your ancestors, and your close friends and acquaintances.  Why are all of these communities so important to us?

The two biggest communities are the world community, and the national.  The world community is an important community because of improvements in technology or products, or when devastations that happen in one part of the world, they always affect the other parts of the world community.  This is very unlike the national community because people do not identify themselves by the world community that they live in.  The national community is the main, but not the only way that people will identify themselves.  People in America often say “I am an American,” and that is a way that they describe themselves. In this community, improvements, devastations, and advances in technology or products would also affect the people.  Like the world community what happens in one part of the community always will affect the rest of the community in some way.

The next biggest community that people are affected by is the Local community.  This community is a neighborhood or two, a village, or a group of farming families.  The local community is an important community because of government, local stores, and schools.  Government affects us by the laws and projects that it enforces.  Schools affect us by the rivalries in sports, friends, and education.  These all make people stronger and more ready for the larger communities.

The next two largest communities are our extended family and our nuclear family.  The nuclear family usually consists of two parents and one or more children.  Extended family is made up of relatives such as cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other close relatives. Our nuclear and extended families may support us in hard times, help us financially in times that we need, and supply us with love, encouragement, and affection that we need.  The main differences between nuclear family and extended family is that we are closer and usually live with our nuclear family.

Ancestors go along with our family.  They are very important because if they had not made the decisions that they did, we would not be where we are or have the same nuclear or extended family that we have now.   This is the unique story and history of every person.  Our ancestry is also told to us by stories from our grandparents and great-grandparents.  Memorial day is a way that we can connect with our ancestors.  It is always fun to learn something new about your ancestors.

Finally, the last community is someone’s friends.  There are two kinds of friends that we have: close friends and acquaintances.  Close friends are very important to us. They welcome us when we come to them, they are the people that a person hangs out with, and the people that help a person through hard times. We, in turn, help them when they need it.  These could be people that a person plays sports with, people that a person has known for a long time, or just people that a person can talk to whenever a person needs to talk to.  Acquaintances are people that a person sees often but never really gets to know them as well as a close friend. I think that the people that a person plays sports with are more like acquaintances, but they do push a person and make that person better.  Some acquaintances that I meet are in band, sports, my church, and school.

In conclusion, we are surrounded and affected by communities. There are big communities and small ones.  The ones that affect us the most are the world community, the national community, the local community, your local community, your nuclear family, your extended family, your ancestors, and your friends.  I am affected by all of these but the ones that I think affects me the most are my extended family, my nuclear family and my friends.  These communities do and always will affect us.

Back