Beijing now has nearly 150 English-medium, K-12 international schools, and the number is growing every year. Priorities for these schools are usually focused around providing high-quality academic education, and offering a range of extracurricular activities to encourage students’ interests and talents. But what are schools doing to help students cherish their own unique cultural characteristics, while also discovering, experiencing, and possibly adopting the cultures of the country that they currently call home?

Whether you are from a multicultural family or a third culture kid (TCK), the process of finding your identity or sense of home is never crystal clear. That’s why culturally-focused study and increased sensitivity to the needs of a diverse student body are taken very seriously in Beijing’s international schools.

Ralf Mayenberger, in addition to being an English and German teacher at Beijing World Youth Academy (BWYA), is a parent of two Third Culture Kids. Last year he was asked as part of a BWYA student’s independent study project to take part in a TEDx talk on campus exploring this topic of TCKs. He began his research by creating a 78-question online survey for students to get involved. What he began to realize through his findings is that many children don’t have the luxury of the universal idea of home being a single place filled with familiar people, and a sense of familial history, like he had grown up within Germany.

Ralf Mayenberger

New definitions of home are created by the connections made through being in and exploring a particular place, specifically the schools which these students attend. It was through this that he realized the importance of friendship and the school environment for TCKs. It’s friendship which not only allows kids from multiple cultures to find comfort in very foreign settings, but it also gives them the necessary skills to adapt and create a sense of home anywhere around the world.

Being an international student means receiving an education that was created to establish globally-minded individuals. While many consider this to be one of the essential skills of the future, becoming globally-minded doesn’t come without its own set of challenges and confusion.

About this Mayenberger commented: “One thing about identity is that it’s not so easy to say what you are. So if I ask my children, ‘What are you? Are you German, or are you Filipino?’ it’s not so easy to answer. They might say ‘I’m Chinese’ because they were born in China. At one point my daughter said she was English because that was her first language. I’m from Germany, and my wife is from the Philippines, so both of those choices have nothing to do with our household.”

For many expat children born in China, being considered Chinese by the general populace is not an option. There are obvious hurdles in regards to receiving physical proof in the form of a Chinese passport, but then there are other differences that are glaringly apparent. For many, when it comes to being viewed as Chinese, you either are or you are not.

So there is a big responsibility for international schools to compensate for this deficit and create a classroom environment that’s equally accommodating to foreigners and locals alike, building the perfect foundation to influence students to think more globally, and adapting traditional and local methods to make sure the needs of all students are met.

One example of adapting a curriculum to fit the needs of a diverse student body can be found at The International Montessori School of Beijing (MSB), where currently 21 nationalities are represented. One thing that’s notable about MSB is that its approach towards Montessori learning has been altered to better suit the needs of Beijing’s foreign children, along with the children with foreign passports who might nonetheless identify as being Chinese. They call this the Dual Language Program (DLP). Kids are made to split their day between both English- and Mandarin-focused instruction to make sure they get equal exposure to each language, along with its respective cultural and social offshoots.

MSB’s Principal Rufus Samkin, says; “There’s a big part of the Montessori curriculum called Cosmic Education, and so, kind of ironically, Cosmic Education focuses on how civilizations of people are the same, what their similar needs are. From early elementary school, the children are challenged with this concept that there are all of these people coming from different places. They look different, they speak different, they eat different things, they have different religions or beliefs or ceremonies, but they are tied together by similarities.”

Rufus Samkin

As a child, Samkin was in a similar position to many of his students. He too was a TCK, following his father as he was assigned to work on engineering projects across Africa. He went to local schools, learning the local language, and did his best to assimilate into these cultures. These formative experiences also influence his understanding and governance of MSB, as he’s well aware of the importance of providing students with a learning environment which is mindful of the local culture, but which also needs to remain in line with the international standards of the Montessori pedagogy. It’s about finding balance.

Though MSB’s dual language program has an established track record, providing young students with the best of both worlds, currently they are also looking into the One Person, One Language model (OPOL), which has also proven to be highly effective in this sort of multilingual learning environment.

Samkin said “One of the beautiful things about the Montessori model is that it’s so adaptable. By design, and something that Maria Montessori wanted from the inception, it is something that could transcend cultural barriers and could be taught anywhere by anybody because it’s taught in the language of humans and not in the language of any one culture.”

Thinking about what we share as human beings is essential in keeping students engaged in what they are learning, and able to apply it to their own lives. Instead of school just being a lengthy and tiring exercise of rote memorization, kids need to be able to take materials learned in class and apply them to situations common to their own experience.

When talking about choosing the right teaching materials that align with the experiences of his students, Mayenberger explained: “Based on their interests they start using what’s presented in the unit and transform it, creating connections to their own lives, and with that, they work on something they want to work with. Though still working on the unit, they are doing it with people with the same ideas, and it helps to create a sense of community.”

In addition to the selection of appropriate materials used to teach throughout different units of a particular subject, students are given opportunities to dive deeper into ideas of culture and identity outside the classroom.

“Students learn a lot through the unspoken, and through interactions with each other. After-school activities are very rich experiences because you are putting the kids together, they’re socializing and interacting in a way that’s not a traditional classroom environment. It’s very much real world. Whatever the activity is, they stop thinking about who they are and where they come from. Actually, when you’re talking about cultural diversity or cultural education, that’s what you want. It’s not ‘my friend who’s Chinese; it’s just ‘my friend’. That’s exactly what happens through the subconscious and the unspoken, and it’s really important,” Samkin stated.

At Harrow Beijing, the founding of the Zhi Li Society, a club intent on injecting more elements of Chinese culture into the school through a collaborative effort between students, staff, and parents, was inspired not by the lack of Chinese culture on campus, but by the need to have more of a student voice in the process of planning these activities.

Harrow Beijing’s Zhi Li Society

This need led to the society’s founding last year, in January 2018. At that time the school was also considering this question, because of the increased popularity of Harrow among Chinese families, and more students expressing interest in Chinese culture.

Rosemary Zhao, Assistant Head Mistress of Harrow Beijing said: “Through the Zhi Li Society we want to help and facilitate our students to understand who they are, where they come from, and what they would like to be in the future. Because they are all, in a way, in a third culture environment at this school.”

While the arts and crafts, which are very much a part of the Zhi Li Society, provide entry points into a greater understanding of Chinese culture, their main focus is the organizing of events and other school-wide activities that correspond to the Chinese holiday calendar. So far they’ve run poetry contests, left Lantern Festival-themed riddles around campus, and are even hosting a “Dragon Boat Race” between Harrow Houses on the football pitch in June.

While the society’s weekly meetings are only open to students in Year 4 and above, Nathan Moore, Economics and Business Studies teacher, said; “I think it was the activities that we’re running within the wider school community which allow us to include everyone. So the lower school students very much take part in the Zhi Li Society just by participating in the activities that we’re running.”

Vicky, one student who is heavily involved in the Zhi Li Society, told beijingkids: “The Zhi Li Society has had a lasting impact on my future because as I’m applying to schools to study politics, I wrote about conflicts in cultures and civilizations and how these shape the world. I wrote in my application how my experience in the Zhi Li Society, in such a multicultural environment, helped me to see the world and to rethink what I want to do in the future.”

Emily, another advocate for the group, said: “It offered me a lot of opportunities because many of the events are discussed by everyone including teachers and parents, but it is mainly run by us, the students. It has given me a lot of leadership opportunities.”

An international school is a complex ecosystem of identities, which has to address the needs of students who come from many parts of the world. At the heart is the paradox that the globally-minded citizens of the future need to start by having a clear sense of who they are and where they come from. For children growing up in a culturally complex environment, this is a challenge; but with careful handling, helping them rise to this challenge can be empowering and enriching.

This article appeared in the beijingkids May 2019 Identity issue.
Photos: Kipp Whittaker; courtesy of Harrow Beijing

As part of Ivy Education Group’s Distinguished Speaker Series, we listened in on Homa Tavangar’s talk about raising global citizens, based on her book: Growing up Global, Raising Children to be at Home in the World.

“Instead of asking your child, What do you want to be when you grow up? Ask, What problem do you want to solve today?“

Tavangar began her talk by defining global citizenship as “being at home in the world” and highlighting the reasons why as parents we should teach our children global culture as early as possible.  A global mindset has become more necessary with globalization, the ever-changing world economy and politics, as well as increasing diversity both in our own neighborhoods and abroad. 

She retold a story from 2003 (9/11) when she first identified a problem in adults: that they are too separated from the rest of the world. She realized that it is too late for adults to begin labeling themselves beyond the memberships of their neighborhoods, states, and countries, or to identify foreign cultures as anything but the “other”.   When catastrophe strikes, instead of reaching out to the wider world for assistance, or having the moral imperative to provide assistance, the majority of adults would rather isolate themselves from the unknown in a bid for safety.   She wanted to her children to grow up with knowledge of the world, rather than just terror or a fear for the unknown.

When Tavangar took her children to live and study in Africa for a semester, she  witnessed how children can accept global citizenship, and how much they can benefit from the comfort of such new identities.  Tavangar’s book, Growing up Global was written specifically for parents after having concluded that parents cannot ignore the effect of globalization on their children’s futures.

14 Ways To Grow A Globally Minded Child
Since the global mindset, which is similar to an entrepreneurial mindset, is a muscle that grows with practice, it’s better to start as early as possible! So let’s look at some ways a parent or a teacher can help raise global citizens:

1. Use metaphors and analogies involving the natural world to teach children about variety, beauty and differences.
2. Read world literature; books written by foreign authors, written about and in foreign countries, or perhaps by an author from your own country or region that is of a different culture than your family. Find a list here.
3. Eat cuisine from all over the world and encourage children to try different foods from ethnic markets or restaurants.
4. Attend cultural festivals; or if they’re unavailable in your region, then celebrate the cultural festival of distant lands.
5. Learn about the traditions and rituals of other cultures and try enacting them at home.
6. Play games and sports of other countries/cultures. Be inspired by this exhaustive list of 80 world games!
7. Discover what foods are said to heal common health conditions in different cultures.
8. Meet and talk to people from cultures other than your own to genuinely get to know them and befriend them!
9. Listen to music from around the world (you can read lyric translations).
10. Display a world map or a globe in a prominent place in your home and encourage exploration and conversations. Take your pick by searching for 世界地图 on Taobao.
11. Learn a foreign language together! Have you heard of Mango?
12. Watch a sports game narrated or hosted in another language.
13. Talk about the origins and trading routes of products used every day in your home.
14. Incorporate humanitarian work in your family life (kiva.org, ripple.org, etc.) as a means to both learn about life elsewhere, but teach your child the importance of service.

Take Global Baby Steps
Although this list can appear daunting to some parents, Tavangar emphasizes to start small—put away your devices, step away from technology, and spend time conversing with your child about the world.

Talk about world news, what day it is in another culture, an upcoming holiday/festival, and remind your child that there is a vast world outside your home and community.  Instead of asking your child, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Ask, “What problem do you want to solve today?” Or, “What challenge do you want to take?” Teach your child that all of us shoulder the future of the world, and every one of us, no matter how young, can make a difference!

Photo: Courtesy of Daystar Academy

If you don’t have an easy answer to the question “Where are you from?” and your closest friends are from six different countries, chances are you’re a third culture kid. The term was coined by Ruth Hill Useem, an American sociologist and anthropologist in the 1950s to describe children who spend a significant portion of their lives outside of their parents’ native culture.

Hannah Smith of Harrow International School of Beijing has written a blog post on the experience of being a third culture kid in Beijing on The Guardian’s Student Blog.

She writes:

Most students at my school aren’t from one particular place. Sure, our passports might say we’re British or Malaysian, but it’s more complicated than that. Where you’re “from” is less about birthplace and more about cultural identity; as an expat student your cultural identity ends up being difficult to categorise.

Third culture kids quite often feel more connected to each other than to their parents culture or the society they live in. Theirs is an experience that only each other can understand. Research from around the world has shown that third culture kids from completely different cultures share more in common with each other than with peers from their parent’s original society.

Quote:

I feel like a foreigner everywhere I go, a sentiment echoed by other students at international schools like mine. Mixed-race students who travel a lot while growing up can lack a cultural identity and also have to struggle with the fact that they don’t have a history – or not one that’s easily explained.

Kamalabadi says: “I very much feel like a cyber-age person, with bits and pieces of my background stuck together like a montage from the things I read, movies I watch and places I’ve been.”

And while third culture kids build connections to all of the societies they are exposed to, they generally don’t feel real ownership of any.

Quote:

For me, a cultural identity is something I have to cultivate and maintain, not something that falls into place naturally. I’ve heard my accent becoming progressively more American over the last five years. This is jarring because my vaguely British accent was the last real reminder of where I was born. Without it, how am I supposed to tell people I’m from the UK?

I’ve had to make a concerted effort to retain my nondescript, regionally ambiguous “English” accent because without it, I don’t have any proof that I was from the UK at all. My passport might as well have been Taiwanese.

This lack of definition means that I’ve ended up in a murky haze of different cultures, with bits and pieces from everywhere I’ve lived and everyone I’ve met. I count with my fingers the way they do in Taiwan and I grew up eating roti in Singaporean food courts and goose fat noodles at my grandmother’s house in Kaohsiung.

The good news for parents of third culture kids is that according to Useem they are more mature as teenagers, much more likely to be linguistically adept, and four times as likely as non-third culture kids to earn a bachelors degree.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.com

  

As anyone who has ever tried to get me to go to anything knows, if it involves lunch or some other meal – even tea and cookies – I’ll be there. So when I saw the invitation to join the beijingkids Club at the new Italian restaurant Alio Olio for a special workshop for third-culture kids and their families, I knew Reina and I had to attend. Not necessarily because we know anything about third-culture kids or have questions, but because we love Italian food. 

The workshop was run by three Parent Effectiveness Trainers Cherie Emigh, Ulrike Gemmer, and Kathryn Tonges and highlighted activities and ideas from their new book Slurping Soup and Other Confusions: True Stories and Activities to Help Third Culture Kids During Transition. They kicked off the event with a fun skit about slurping soup and why it is done in the Chinese culture but not in some foreign cultures. After that were activities involving mazes, making paper hats that represent our cultures, and even a quiz on food rules. As it was a workshop for parents and kids, the authors kept it to about 90 minutes, during which time Reina managed to wander over every inch of Alio Olio restaurant, but no one really minded. There were about thirty families in attendance and it was great to meet some new people, including Cindy Tarratz, another Parent Effectiveness Trainer. It seems parent effectiveness is a growing field in Beijing and I look forward to trying some of the workshops on offer in the near future. For more on Slurping Soup and its authors, check out www.slurpingsoup.com. 

Afterwards, Reina and I loved the bow-tie pasta, salad, and pizza on offer from Alio Olio. If you get a chance, check out this restaurant run by a real Italian owner seeking to bring a little of his culinary culture to Beijing.

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Photography: www.chrislay.com
Blog: www.beijing-kids.com/blog/beijingkids/Christopher-Lay

Teachers at international schools sometimes get a bum rap. The idea that people who teach overseas are somehow less professional or qualified than educators back home is a common misconception – perhaps due to an unfortunate confusion with certain less-than-stellar overseas English teachers who get hired by dubious organizations simply because they were born speaking English, or even worse, due to their ethnicity.

Common sense dictates that it’s the individual and not the location of their institution that determines the quality of the educator. This was certainly true in my school years when I attended a range of public and private institutions back in the States and abroad. My teachers ranged from the utterly crappy (i.e. high school football coaches doubling as “history teachers” whose entire curriculum consisted of reading chapters aloud from the textbook) to the eminently inspiring, and I found that no matter where I went, the ratio was about the same – 2:1 (two crappy teachers for every one excellent educator).

Like most students I also had my favorites – those teachers whom I respected, enjoyed learning from, and/or got along well with. Of these there were many, but in my experience there was one teacher who stood about above the rest.

In 1990 my father was transferred to Dubai and part of his package was an opportunity for me to attend boarding school overseas (at the time Dubai’s international school did not go past the tenth grade). After some discussions with my parents, we settled for a school in Switzerland; and though it was difficult leaving my friends behind, I set off for my senior year in Europe with an open mind.

The boarding school I attended is located in a small town called Leysin perched atop the Alps in the French speaking part of the country. Opened in 1961, it has continuously educated students from around the world in an American-style curriculum. Today, Leysin American School alumni range far and wide, with a few, including myself, living here in Beijing.

When I arrived at the campus in the fall of that year, one of the first people I met was Fred Sharp – a garrulous and slightly eccentric Englishman who was our dorm proctor and my teacher-to-be in English and the Humanities. I found him intimidating at first; particularly during the first week when he sternly lectured the boy’s dormitory during an assembly – someone, it seemed, had been deliberately clogging up the toilets with toilet paper.

But my impression quickly changed after a few lessons in his classroom. Still awash with memories of that textbook-reading “history teacher” from the year before, I found Mr. Sharp’s lectures intensely engaging by contrast. Whether he was describing the “unbridled passion” of Wuthering Heights, a Beethoven concerto or Yama, the “King of the Dead” in traditional Tibetan Mythology, he always did so with an infectious enthusiasm that bordered on fervor. He was diverse as well – his courses not only included English and The Humanities, but he also went on to teach mathematics, statistics and a course with the grandiose title of “The Theory of Knowledge.” His colorful lectures were as entertaining as they were informative to even the most jaded of students and he remained one of the most well known teachers on campus long after I graduated. There were other fine faculty members on staff during my year at LAS, Mr. Sharp was by far the most memorable to me – even more so than all the professors I had in university.

I lost touch with Mr. Sharp after graduation – for 18 years to be exact – until one day recently when we got in contact again through Facebook. I was amazed to see that he was still at LAS (after 25 years) and now a part of the alumni office. On a whim I sent him a friend request and a message, and was delighted to get a reply. It was even more of a surprise to see that he still remembered quite well, as if I had just graduated.

Just last week we met up here in Beijing along with two other students (one a recent graduate and the other a current student) as he was traveling through Asia for the summer. Over dinner he updated me on goings-on back in Leysin and all the changes at the school (where annual tuition is now a staggering €70,000). Despite feeling quite old myself (especially compared to my fellow alumni at the table), Mr. Sharp had not changed a lick – he looked exactly the same as what I remember from 18 years ago (due in no small part to his 25 years of living in the Swiss Alps).

As loquacious and engaging as ever, he still managed to amaze me with his encyclopedic memory; and despite the fact that he’s had almost a thousand students since my time, he remembered the names and faces (from photos we shared) of almost everybody in my class and has kept in touch with hundreds of his former students through Facebook and his travels each year.

Now, after 25 years, he is finally considering leaving Leysin for a teaching opportunity elsewhere, perhaps even here in Beijing. Any school would be lucky to have him.