What is home?

I met a veteran IB teacher at a get-together once in the IB school that I used to teach in. He had been a travelling teacher for 30 years with his wife. Originally from the USA, he and his wife had decided finally to settle in Bangladesh, and he called it ‘home’. “There is emerging literature on modes of belonging that focuses on migrants’ constructions of their own identities in relation to different places, groups and countries”, (Bauböck).

Home, today, is where you feel a ‘connection’. “What you realize is that connection is why we're here. It's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives”. un-conditioning yourself from the system you were born into, one can choose consciously the home by staying attentive to what feels as home.

It can’t be easy though to be able to feel the connection to a place far away from one’s ethnography. It requires a set of skills, attitudes and values that can be consolidated in the term ‘global mind-set’. “The biggest challenge is to change our mind-set regarding migration, to change how we represent migrants. Our most common assumptions regarding migration are too often based on stereotypes, myths and fantasies regarding the “radical difference” of the migrants”, (Crépeau).

If we approach others with the intention of understanding them and finding commonalities than feel fearful of the differences, then we are onto the track of developing a global mind-set. Perhaps we can stop seeing ourselves and others as migrants but approach as a prospective friend.

I don’t think that any of my own education ever touched upon the global mind-set. My education was in India in the space of maths and we followed the national curriculum. The set-up was traditional, the focus on exams and marks with no other purpose expected. However, where subconsciously the global mind-set seeped in was in the cosmopolitan set up of the city I studied in, New Delhi, the capital of India. Being the capital, it has no main cultural anchor as we have individuals from all possible states and some countries who reside here and mingle with each other.

My parents were first generation migrants from the village where they belonged to and worked hard to find a footing in the city life. For two decades we lived in harmony with our neighbours as individuals from three different cultures in our country. So, the culture of hard work, open mindedness, acceptance and tolerance was set in us right from childhood.

My father was in a government job that required a transfer every 3 years and hence we moved from Nepal to some cities in India. This movement brought about a natural affinity with other cultures. Since the schools I studied in were central government schools, my classroom was filled with similar students with migrant parents. Hence I learn to see myself not as part of a particular culture with its set rituals, but a citizen of the world.

Perhaps that is why when I consciously moved to work and study with an international group of individuals, I found it easy to adapt, accommodate and adjust, the 3 AAA’s of teaching life!