A label fit for rainbow mobility? Richard Pearce

from International School Magazine - Spring 2018

The team behind the athlete, Anne Louise Williams

I would argue that it is not a new label we need. We need a new perspective, a way of opening our minds to remember a very simple, timeless truth. We need to remember that people have always moved, always been restless for adventure, or for a better life. Not everyone to be sure, but not everyone moves today, either. In some corners of the US, at least, and of Germany and other countries I am almost sure, live folks who have no desire to go anywhere or be anyway different – like Dorothy in Kansas, but they don’t need to go to Oz to know that their heart’s desire is right outside their own back door. I met friends in Connecticut like that; they live there to this day. Happily, I might add. Do we need to label those people? What shall we call them: the One Culture Kids? Sounds a bit denigrating when you say it out loud, no? Ah yes. Now we get to the heart of the matter. This whole TCK thing sounds a bit like turning a necessity into a virtue – okay, so your parents had to move you because of a job, or chose to move you for more opportunities, or had to move you because your country was a war-torn mess …. or, or, or. You’re a kid, you got moved. It was jarring, you either opened up and found new friends or closed down and became wary, unsure, guarded. Some of that had to do with what – and more so, who – you found on the other end of that moving van.

So what do our students find when they arrive at our The editors’ ‘Comment’ in the last issue of International School (‘TCK: a label whose time has come – and gone?’) challenges a long-serving label which has brought comfort to many since it was coined in the 1960s. I share the editors’ doubts about the adequacy of the term for today’s school? A place that respects all traditions, as well as one that builds its own tradition; a tradition based on mutual respect for all and built on working together in community? A place where current students and staff take new students under their wings, regardless of race, creed, or class? A place where we learn together, laugh together, make mistakes together and apologize together? That is the kind of place where I work, and the kind of place I hope all children find when they come to school, be it a new school in a new part of the world, or the same neighborhood school that their parents attended. We don’t need labels to help us appreciate each other and our 21st century web of a world. We need good old-fashioned respect, honest curiosity to know one another authentically and deeply, patience with our imperfect humanity together, and a genuine desire to remember we are all passengers on the same fragile blue planet we call home, wherever our hearts may land on its wondrous shores. In a nutshell: we need to be, and teach others to be, IB World Citizens, just as we are IB World Schools.

Bonnie Friedmann is an elementary school teacher at accadis International School in Bad Homburg, Germany, and a co-director of the new accadis Theater Club.