Silas' Special First Visitor from the U.S. - "Ms. Mary"

This Saturday (Oct 20) we hosted a very special family friend from Arizona - Professor Mary Teagarden.  A bit of background on this amazing women who are children call "Ms. Mary" and her influencing on our global parenting is outlined below.  In addition, to the long-term ways that we appreciate her friendship and kindness to our family, it was very very special for Silas to have his first U.S. based visitor!

Mary meets Silas while Asa shows off one of his Star Wars lego toys from "Ms. Mary"

The older three kids show off some of their "Ms. Mary" gifts. 

They eagerly anticipate each time she visits - not only because of her gifts,

but because her childhood was not terribly different than theirs. 

Who is "Ms. Mary: Since I (Joab) was a MBA student at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, one of our family's good friends has been Thunderbird Professor Mary Teagarden.  Not only was she one of my favorite professors in the classroom, but we also had the opportunity to cooperate on several reasearch projects.  Through these projects I not only learned a tremdous amount about cool MBA topics like technology transfer, corporate social responsbility and intellectual property protection, but under Professor Teagarden's influence I have begun to develop a curiosity around global business topics that continues to serve me well today.

Third Culture Kids (TCKs): Personally one of the areas where this kind of curosity has served our family well is by seeking to understand how to effectively nuture our "third culture kids" (TCK).  There is a bunch of research on this, but basically TCKs are those children that live outside their home culture and therefore out of necessity create a "third culture" that doesn't matches the home culture of their parents (America in our case) or the host culture where they are currently living (China for us).  A key TCK skill we see our kids (especially Miriam) use with regularity is cultural "style switching" whereby she will communicate something differently to Chinese friends than to non-Chinese friends. 

What This Means for Our Family - Miriam at School: This "style switching" is not simply about language (what you say), but more importantly culture (how you say it).  For example, the way teachers communicate to a student the need for improvement may have the same intention (the child's improvement in class) as their U.S. counterparts, but the tone and demeanor in China often sounds much harsher than what we may be used to in the U.S.  Miriam has to navgate this and then turn around and communicate it to us - her U.S. parents, which is no small task.  However, Professor Teagarden has helped Emily and I understand just how critical it is to develop such skill.  

Tying It All Together: Today, "style switching" may make it easier for Miriam to communicate to her American parents the expectations of her Chinese school teachers, but the real value with this skill is in the future.  Professor Teagarden leads an institute at Thunderbird called the Najafi Global Mindset Institute.  This organization fundamentally helps business leaders develop the ability to "better influence those who are different from them".  Professor Tegarden has written more about why this matters to business leaders, but personally Emily and I are passionate that we nurture this ability in our children.  Regardless of what field of work they go into, we want them to be able to not only appreciate that different cultures see things differently, but also effectively communicate,  influence and lead people from different cultures. 

So our prayer is that the skills that make communicating about Chinese homework easier today will be used years from now to lead changes that can span across cultures.