A TCK Perspective: When School becomes Home
“Where are you from?“: The question every TCK – or “third-culture kid”- hates the most. Are you asking where I was born? Where I grew up? Where my parents live now? Where I live now? Where I’m ethnically from? Sometimes I’m tempted to retort: “I honestly have no idea.” Because when every one of those questions elicits a different answer, how can you really decide?
Home. It’s interesting – every person reads this same word and pictures a location unlike the person next to them. Whether it’s a physical house, a family member, or a town, what someone considers “home” is unique to his or her human experience. By the time I was 8 years old, I’d lived in 4 different places, in 2 different countries. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the school I entered in 3rd grade became my home. A place where I could speak both languages I knew interchangeably, where I was surrounded by classmates who had also lived in several places and with teachers who understood that sometimes customs and cultures got muddled and mashed together. I discovered my identity as a “TCK”, by spending time with others who had some of the same struggles and perspectives as I did.
I was at “The American School in Japan,” in Tokyo; a private school with a great educational pedagogy and phenomenal teachers. Students came and went, typically every 3 years. There were a lot of children who’s parents were associated with the embassy, or who’s parents were the heads of the Japan branch of an international corporation. In that sense, I suppose it was elite. But in another sense, I feel like every student was humbled by a culture they didn’t know, and knew what it was like to feel like an outsider based on the experience they’d had moving to Tokyo. Our school was our home, and our friends were our family.
Honestly, the things I remember from my education at that school are not the ones from the classroom. They’re the field trips to the Atomic Bomb Memorial in Hiroshima, where all my classmates, Caucasian, South American, Asian, alike shared the same horrified look on our faces. They’re the Japanese culture days, where it didn’t matter “where you were from,” just that you wanted to participate and try something new. I took the usual classes like AP Chem and AP US History. The academics were great. But those experiences aren’t the ones that made me appreciate where I was. That isn’t why I think the education I received was stellar.
In my Junior year of high school, my life – educational and otherwise – changed pretty dramatically. My family moved back to San Francisco, California, where we’d lived for a while when I was really young. For my junior and senior year of high school, I attended a private institution that is considered one of the most elite in the East Bay. My transition from ASIJ to The Head Royce School is not one that I reflect on and call “easy.” I can’t even say I’d retrospectively do it again if I had the choice. I think the hardest realization was learning that the model of an open minded, culturally accepting classmate that I’d come to believe was standard, very much was not. The culture at ASIJ colored my perspective of schooling and multicultural peers, and because Head Royce could not provide the same level of authentic, cultural (as opposed to ethnic) diversity, I had a hard time fitting in.
The education that I received at Head Royce was binary – black and white, right and wrong. I learned study skills, time management, and hard work. Necessary, but not homey. My classmates were my competition, not my family. My teachers were there to teach and to discipline, not deviate from the curriculum. That being said, I came to Colby feeling prepared by the academic rigor that my Junior and Senior year had provided. My graduating class only had 72 students, and I knew that I would thrive in a setting like this, where classes were small and teachers are engaging.
Despite having graduated from an “elite school,” I still feel out of place here sometimes. My elite school is 3,500 miles away from the ones that many of my fellow classmates at Colby have attended. It’s different than the cookie cutter New England boarding prep school that is considered “truly superior” here at Colby. Which begs the question: are all “elite” institutions the same? Are they all perceived the same way? I’d argue not, but what do I really know.
School, particularly in elementary, middle and high school, is where teenagers spend the majority of their waking hours. The atmosphere of the institution, the other students that attend, the teachers outlook and teaching style; all of these factors play into the overall experience. My educational experience thus far has undoubtedly shaped how I am, and changed how I look at the world, not to mention how I interact with those around me.
So that begs the question, where am I from? Despite the supposed elite academies I’ve attended, I still can’t quite figure it out. San Francisco is just where my parents are – where a physical house with my stuff in it is. Tokyo is where I grew up. I’ve lived longer now in Maine than I have in California. So when people ask, maybe I should just start saying “Colby.” Schools can become homes, right?