057 – S2 E21 – Friendships, our “own normal”, and the tolerance for unresolvable conflicts to exist

homeroom is an international podcast bridging the education gap between the classroom and the living room by starting conversations impacting the next generation. In this episode, I speak with Mel—an educator, artist, interculturalist, and reader—about her earliest memories of growing up as the gifted, oldest daughter of 6 children. We talk about her experiences of making friends—and making bullies—across the US, England, Korea, and Germany, and what perspectives she gained by living within multiple cultures. We also discuss cultural relativity and ethnocentrism through personal anecdotes and why it’s important to read widely and diversely to minimize our biases and fall victim single stories of people who are different from us. Check out our conversation, join our ongoing discourse on social media, and subscribe for more. https://www.instagram.com/homeroomed You can also find a computer-generated transcript of our episode at https://www.homeroomed.com — Mel is doing her best to stay balanced in the center of a professional Venn diagram made of three circles; education, the arts(mostly writing), and interculturalism. Unsurprisingly, this has taken a wide variety of forms over the years. She has a B.A. in Communications and Theatre and an M.A. in Theology, as well as a double handful of certificates in seemingly random (but highly intentional) things like TESOL, Korean traditional opera (pansori), and...contact tracing. https://www.instagram.com/equalopportunityreader/ Rée is a visual storyteller and educator exploring the consequences that mass education has on creativity, identity, and interpersonal connection. https://www.instagram.com/theinterdisciplinarian — References Korea Times Article on Making Friends by David A. Tizzard (news article) Don’t Insist on English by Patricia Ryan (TED talk) Monkey Man by Dev Patel (official trailer) The Courage to be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi (book)