ELEMENTARY HA M U B T R A E T L I LA B S Alva N., umbrella sketch. B 32 Mayuka Thais ecause of my transnational background and experiences, when I became the junior school art teacher at the Inter-national School of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo, Japan, I made it my mis-sion to ensure that my art classes were enjoyable for all ethnicities and students with different reli-gious and cultural backgrounds. My students came from more than thirty different nations, and the majority were third culture kids. This means that because of their parents’ occupations, their lives were in a continual state of flux—every two or three years they moved to a different country. Some of these students were multi-nationals with multi-ethnic backgrounds. Many of these students lived in at least five or six different countries before returning to live in the country of their birth. Many of these students, including myself, have had a diffi-cult time understanding the concept of home; we often feel displaced. JANUARY 2020 SchoolArts
School Arts Magazine January 2020: Page 34
