I want to teach you more about Preparing International Students for Art School

Preparing international students for art school can sometimes come with some additional or unexpected challenges that you would not expect when counseling local students. The first thing would be to address the elephant in the room. More international parents are making a choice to send their children abroad as they believe that they will get a better education and consequently a better life. Consequently, many of them are quite particular about what their childrens' area of study ought to be. Secondly, international students do not always have access the sort of curricula that would support their desire to study in the arts nor would they have the opportunity to get support for their portfolios. Lastly, finding employment can be a challenge in and of itself given that students also have to worry about the extra barrier being their ability to get a work visa.



Once you're on the same page as the parents and the student, a big part will be helping your student plan their portfolio. There are ideally two things you can do here. Firstly, you can check where there can be overlap between their art classes and their ability to use whatever projects they have for the portfolio. Since senior year is already such a busy year, there is no reason why they cannot use what they have already made. Secondly, you can communicate with their art teacher to create a three way relationship in order to help create the best portfolio you can. Below is an example from Ringling School of Art and Design about how one should plan the portfolio.

If the student's art teacher knew about these requirements above, they could assist the student in ways that you would not be able to. Finally, it would be helpful for you and for the student to build a relationship with the art professors who may be able to give constructive feedback about what may or may not be considered. During my visit at Ringling, they told me that they would be able to provide feedback given the establishment of a relationship. From there, the student need only follow the instructions for application as they would any other school.

If you would like more information, I would recommend this video which shows an art professor's thought process when going through a portfolio. This would also be incredibly helpful for your student as they prepare their portfolio. Next, this more lighthearted article about at student's experience at art school would be a good read for your student. Finally, when talking to parents, I'm always a fan of using hard data. Consequently, I'd recommend using this page from O*NET to really hammer down that art school is not a one way road to homeless if they focus on making the right connections and developing the right skills.

If you have any other questions about the topic, please contact me at l34d.ball00n@gmail.com

How International Students and TKCs overlap

Every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square. This is probably the first inclusive/exclusive topics that one hears about growing up. Similarly, I would like to clear up a similar misconception that you might have if you're planning on moving abroad to delve into the International School game. This is a topic that I hold dear given that I myself was a third culture kid and it was crucial for me to understand about myself, which is unfortunately something that I never got to learn about it until I researched it myself.

First of all, it would be helpful to define what a TCK is. They are children who don't necessarily belong to either their parents' culture or the culture from where they are currently living. The reason for this is that they are too much of an outsider to be consider a local and too much of a local to be considered an outsider. The Venn Diagram below shows quite clearly the relationships various terms.



One other significant factor that is relevant for TCKs is the fact that their formative years or the majority of their lives involved living in multiple countries. This would include multiple groups such as children of missionaries, children of military, and children of diplomats.

Now that that's out of the way, let's go over how international students differ from third culture kids. International students can just be students who are studying abroad for a year or two. If a student from China were to go to the US for their junior or senior year of high school, they would just be considered international students.

Finally, let's talk about what that means for you as an educator who will be potentially working with third culture kids. More than likely, your TCK will be more flexible to change than other students. This could mean anything from being more adaptive to your teaching style to the student being a good leader given their ability to build strong connections with other students. On the other hand, a TCK may also be subject to a significant amount of anxiety about their identity, at which point your role can be to ask difficult questions, be receptive towards their experiences, and also continue to learn about TCKs and how you can support them as a teacher. More often than not, third culture kids are not aware that they fit that bill and nor will their parents. Consequently, one of the biggest things you can do is to talk to them and their parents about what it means to be a TCK and what some challenges may be while focusing on the strengths of course.

One book that I would highly recommend to learn more about TCK is Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds by Ruth E. Van Reken. Furthermore, I would also recommend this YouTube video which is a TEDx talk which greatly elaborates on the subject.

If you have any other questions about the topic, please contact me at l34d.ball00n@gmail.com