In our contribution we challenge the grounds of ‘professional identity’ as it has been defined within education. We argue that through the understanding of and engagement with the work of education – its nature, conditions, plurality - we can interrupt the mechanisms that establish a direct correspondence between the educational gesture and the belongingness to a rational community (the teachers). By belonging to a rational community (Lingis, 1994), each subject has the possibility of acting as a representative of a common and serious discourse, in which what matters is what is said, rather than who says it. We envisage the rejection of the serious speech of the rational community as a mean to accept and make visible the plurality of contemporary work and workers in the broad field of education and learning. Facing the different kind of workers emerging in our days and the diversity of the work done in education/learning settings , we highlight the need to define and question the eventual educational nature of their work. We explore the possibility to envisage a community of otherness within educational workers, defined through the educational nature of the work they do, and not by policy, professional requirements or pre-established career paths.