Urban School Formation: Identity Work and Constructing an Origin Story

In this article, I analyze the formation of Shearwater High School in St. Louis, Missouri and I explore the identity work involved in building the school. Diverging from standardization trends in urban education, the school came to fruition through a creative process, which was in-flux and supported by diverse communities in St. Louis. This article applies three identity lenses—intersectionality, an identity of becoming, and the practice of recognition—to explain the social construction of the organization and its mission. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.