Resources and Recommendations for Teachers..
from Teachers..
...in combination with contemporary artists...
... as a curriculum framework for TCKS
in international schools.
Unit Prompts
Christine RasmussenUsing the idea of this internal struggle or battle, students can explore ways in which their mobile lifestyle as a TCK has created conflict in relationships, values, feelings, and beliefs.
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1. In Letting go, 2010, Rasmussen explains having to let go of the ideal experience, letting go of the frustration of having a different life than that of those who aren't TCKs. This invites a discussion on times in our students’ lives where they wanted to hold onto a lifestyle, memory, or idea of the way they wanted their life to be, versus the way that it actually is. Students could create works that explore an experience, relationship, place or idea that they had to learn (or are still learning to) to let go, while also contrasting this loss with what they gain in the process; the new experiences, places, and relationships that evolve as a result from "letting go.”
2. Using the idea of this internal struggle or battle, students can explore ways in which their mobile lifestyle as a TCK has created conflict in relationships, values, feelings, and beliefs. Students can create works that challenge these conflicts in an attempt to reclaim one aspect of themselves, as Rasmussen does in her series, "Flawless," question them as in Deconstruction, or find a way to layer them, combining and in essence validating both as they come together to create something new. |
1. Von Bargen's work, The Long Walk Home, uses the concept of time to explore cultural connection and a personal journey. As time goes on, places, people, and possessions are left in the past, and TCKs often look toward an unknown future. Using the concept of time and pivotal moments in their lives, students can question how these moments reflect their ever-changing lives. Students can focus on how they as individuals absorb the new surroundings, create connections to memories from the past, and bring their cultural past into their present reality, mapping out their experience in relation to place and culture.
2. Students can explore their friendships throughout time, questioning disconnected friendships, proximity friendships, family relationships, as well as third culture vs. mono-cultural friendships. By creating time evolution works, students explore their personal feelings of their journey in a new place, throughout many different places, relationships, cultures, personal struggles, or fleeting memories. 3. Using Von Bargen's series "One" as a foundation, students can question how place and culture effects and changes them, as well as how they impact the places they live. Students can explore their own relationships to the different places they have lived and take a moment to step back, and reflect on their own personal stories, and create works that recreate the memory of a specific place, embodying their solitary relationship with that place within a single, powerful image. |
Alex Von BargenBy creating time evolution works, students explore their personal feelings of their journey in a new place, throughout many different places, relationships, cultures, personal struggles, or fleeting memories.
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Cathleen Hadley and Yomee KoUsing the concept of reflection, reassessing, maintaining balance, students could create self-portraits that reflect and reassess their identities, either conceptually, through collected experiences, or cultural layering.
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1. Ko and Hadley express ways in which they collected objects as symbols or connections to place. Using these ideas, students could create memory reconstructions based on collected items; ticket stubs, language studies, souvenirs, and items of personal significance in reference to a particular place and time. Students could explore how these memories overlap with one another, influence one another, and blur and fade with time.
2. Both Yoomee Ko and Cathleen Hadley express a similar comfort in self- portraits, and how concentrating on oneself seemed to bring understanding to what was happening around them. Using the concept of reflection, reassessing, maintaining balance, students could create self-portraits that reflect and reassess their identities, either conceptually, through collected experiences, or cultural layering. Students can discuss the different factors that create who a person is, and the different experiences each person has within that contribute to who they are. 3. Students can also discuss how perspective plays a role in their lives, and how they see themselves versus how others in their host or home cultures view them. This contrast will invite students to question the different roles or identities they might play as Third Culture Kids, and shed light on the uniqueness of their situation so that they may begin to understand how others see them, how they see others, and how they view themselves. |
1. Joo Yeon Woo carefully collects histories, stories and fears of her subjects, and houses their journey within a simple binder, creating a juxtaposition between what is viewed on the outside versus what is housed within. Students could create altered books or sculptures based on different times in their lives where they felt misunderstood, unknown, or marginalized because those around them couldn't understand the complexity of their experiences, memories, and collected items of personal significance within. Through conversation of the exterior vs. the interior, students are reflecting on the complexity of their cultural identity through sense of place, memories, and culture.
2. In Traveler’s Cup, Woo (2014) documents place and her momentary experience, attempting to internalize it before leaving that place, perhaps to never return. Using this idea, students can document different concepts of impermanence through photographic or visual journaling, creating collection of experience that begins to tie students to place and memory. |
Joo Yeon WooStudents could also discuss the ways in which Woo shows a collection of histories and stories, but blocks the viewer from reading them, and all that that implies.
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Grace KimUsing visual metaphors, students begin translating their own experience that is sometimes hard to explain into a visual representation, initiating thoughtful reflection into their own ideas of place, identity, and culture.
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1. In Uproot, Kim uses the metaphor or being a plant uprooted from its security within the soil. Using humor, irony, or thoughtful inquiry, students could consider different symbols that reflect their mobile lifestyle, strengths or struggles they have as TCKs, and create works that use visual onomatopoeia to reflect meaning. Using visual metaphors, students begin translating their own experience that is sometimes hard to explain into a visual representation, initiating thoughtful reflection into their own ideas of place, identity, and culture, and how these interact with one another within their lives.
2. In her installation, Untitled, Grace Kim uses human hair to represent and symbolize instability and discomfort that she felt as a TCK, inviting her audience to participate in the experience. This work invites the audience to become an essential part of the piece, creating a dialogue in the classroom about participatory artwork, and how that helps convey meaning. Students can brainstorm and discuss feelings, struggles, questions or strengths they have as TCKs and collaborate on building these feelings in their audience through metaphoric, symbolic and participatory techniques. Students can create either collaborative or individual works that physically invite the viewer to partake in their experience in order to better understand their situation. |
More artists...
Other Online Resurces
iEARN Collaboration Center
Project Space: Special Place Project Space: Wall of Names Project Space: One day in the Life |
T-R-A-C-E-S: Transcultural Research Artist Curator Exchange Series
You Are Not Here: a dislocative tourism agency |