Thanks for pointing out Paul-Olivier’s comment and link – I will take a closer look at that article tomorrow. 🙂

I think that it’s really positive and healthy to take the approach that you and my student have taken. At the same time, I didn’t want to downplay or minimize the emotional challenges that others have felt with this experience, if that makes sense.

I agree: “third culture” is a bit awkward. “Amphibian” was new to me when I read the Cisneros quote a few weeks ago, and I think you’re right about its implication of comfort in different environments.

The idea of the bridge is really important to me because it gives me a metaphor to conceptualize my role in the community I serve. That is to say, if I am making connections (building bridges) between students (or their families) and resources that they otherwise would lack, I am doing my job well.

I encountered the term in Marshall & Oliva’s textbook Leadership for social justice: making revolutions in education (2nd ed), in a chapter that presented a case study of “bridge people” – Latino educators in Texas who advocated for students in an effort to build “bridges” for families.