One of the first stories I tell students attending our onboarding week in August is a variation of the story that author David Foster Wallace used to open his speech to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College:
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What’s water?’”
Wallace’s point was straightforward, “important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” And his goal was clear, to inspire people to question their deepest assumptions - their “default settings” - and choose to live their lives with compassion and openness to seeing things differently. This is a critical lesson for all of us in our daily lives, and one that rings especially true for those of us who are in constant interaction with the diversity of perspectives inherent in international work. For the children of internationally-mobile adults, it can come as a shock. When all we know is water, we don’t even see that it’s there, until the day someone decides to fish us out and move us across the ocean.
Each year, students arrive at our French bilingual and international school in Paris from countries around the world, often from multicultural homes, often having followed their parents from posting to posting, changing countries and schools every few years, and sometimes leaving the only home they’ve ever known for the first time in their lives. Each year, student surveys reveal how difficult the initial transition can be, for first-timers and serial movers alike.
When they first arrive, students can feel lost, hopeful, disoriented, excited, scared, sad, and even angry that their parents have made this choice on their behalf. They need to hear that all of their emotions are valid. They need peer mentors and buddies to show them the ropes. And they need guidance to be able to understand their new context and how to “fit in.” Helping children understand the water they are swimming in, and how it differs from the water they are used to, can help them stay afloat.
While Erin Meyer wrote The Culture Map (2014) primarily for global business professionals learning to negotiate intercultural differences on teams or in meetings, her framework holds up well in the context of international schools, where arriving students must learn to navigate not only new friendships and new expectations, but often new cultural norms that may be left unacknowledged or unaddressed.
When speaking to students about the Culture Map and its eight dimensions, it’s important that they understand that “fitting in” does not mean giving up your own culture(s) in order to assimilate entirely into a new one. Rather, understanding where one’s comfort zone lies on each spectrum, in relation to the general cultural tendencies of their new home - both in terms of local culture and a specific school culture, which can be different - helps to anticipate challenges and mitigate moments of discomfort that may otherwise have a detrimental effect on motivation and perseverance. Anticipating these challenges also helps kids find the keys to thrive in their new waters. If anything, it allows them to suspend judgment and give their new home a chance.
Of the eight dimensions Meyer outlines, with new middle school students, I focus on the three that are most relevant to a teenager’s experience at school: communicating, leading, and evaluating. Emphasizing the individual nature of this reflection - that I am asking them to think not about their country of birth, the nationality on their passport, or the stereotypes associated with the cultures they grew up in, but about their own personal experience and preference - I ask students to stand up and roughly gather around a center line, then to move to one side of the room or the other depending on their answer to each question:
Are you most comfortable in a low context or a high context culture? In other words, are you used to detailed information always being provided to you, through signs and step-by-step instructions, for example, or are you used to information being “understood,” withheld, and to knowing that you always need to ask questions?
Are you most comfortable in a culture where students and adults interact on equal footing, through friendly banter and open, informal small talk, or in a culture where there is a clear divide between adults and children, who must always address teachers with more formality?
Are you comfortable with direct negative feedback, or have you only ever experienced indirect negative feedback? Are you used to parents and teachers telling you flat out when you are wrong, that your work does not meet expectations, and point out your mistakes, or to a lighter touch and more positively-framed feedback, regardless of your errors?
The first thing we notice when we do this activity is that people end up standing everywhere along the spectrum, reflecting both the diversity of cultures they are bringing to our community, and the diversity of experiences they are going to have here. The next thing we notice is that as we move from question to question, there is often a lot of shuffling around, as individual experience is often a mish-mash of different cultural norms. Finally, we look at where French culture (our local context) and our school culture (as mapped by a survey of student peer leaders) tracks on each of these three dimensions, and I ask students to notice where there is the biggest gap between their own comfort zone and the culture they are stepping into. That will be their area of greatest challenge and where they will need to remind themselves that the discomfort or disappointment they may be feeling could be due to cultural differences.
For students new to French culture - a relatively high context and hierarchical culture that values direct negative feedback - this means remembering:
to always ask questions when information is not provided up front,
to always treat adults with the proper markers of respect, and
to not take criticism personally.
Knowing this and being able to anticipate discomfort helps students put misunderstandings and potentially difficult situations into perspective. Instead of reacting with judgment and possibly rejection of the unfamiliar, they are more likely to react with curiosity and take things in stride.
Finally, I explain the concept of Peach and Coconut cultures, first elaborated in Riding The Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business (1997) by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner. Making friends is, of course, always the number one priority of new middle school students, and yet friendship rituals are far from universal. Another paradigm created to help adults negotiate interactions in the workplace, the idea that some people are more like peaches (open and friendly with a hard inner core) while others are more like coconuts (more reserved with a tough outershell) can help teenagers understand why they might feel like they haven't made friends quickly, especially for peaches who suddenly find themselves surrounded by coconuts. It’s not that their classmates don’t like them, or that they will never make friends, only that those relationships take longer to develop. Patience is key.
While The Culture Map may have been written for adults, the various dimensions of culture that it describes apply to all ages, and are especially helpful for students at international schools who may not realize right away that not only are they now swimming in new waters, they have always been swimming in one type of water or another. Culture is everywhere, with so much of the iceberg lying, invisible, below the surface, unacknowledged. Raising awareness of key cultural differences that may affect their daily lives at school can help young arrivals approach discomfort with a more critical eye, take missteps with good humor, and maintain the motivation and positive outlook necessary to truly adapt and thrive in their new world.
References
Riding The Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars.
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer.
Peach & Coconut Cultures: Navigating Small Talk Around the World by MyWorldAbroad.com.
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace.
Lyn Thompson Lemaire is the Head of Adaptation Programs at Ecole Jeannine Manuel in Paris, France.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyn-thompson-lemaire-9689b145/
