What do the parents of international students want from staff?
This wisdom has been harvested from international transferee parents, who, with 20 20 hindsight, wished they had known how to communicate these things with all staff in Educational Organisations before they started.
Wishlist for Greater International Cultural Sensitivities
Do: recognize that when the behaviour of an international child, or their family offends you, there can be a nation of millions of people who do the same thing. This is not a personality flaw, This can merely be an automatic ‘way of doing things’ that has worked for the person, their society and their ancestors, probably for a few thousand years.
Do: seek out the parent’s input when there is unacceptable behavior. For example, extreme demonstrations of affection, which is quite normal amongst Hispanic children, have been interpreted as bullying in younger children and sexual harassment in older children.
Do: be kind to the family. Through moving counties, they are in extreme upheaval, the least of which is the physical. The stress level is greater than experiencing the death of a partner or a parent in most cases.
Don’t: Ignore unacceptable behaviour and hope it will go away – it won’t! For the international child to have the best chance of success, he or she needs to learn there are other ways of doing things than the ones they have been immersed in so far.
Don’t: expect the child or the parents to “know better” – the “better” they know doesn’t coincide with yours! Until someone explains to them, they still won’t know!
Don’t: Judge their way as wrong – it is merely different
Source: Mothers of International Children: in the interest of minimizing the emotional carnage experienced by the mum and the children in international moves. |
