Cross-Cultural Schooling Experiences of Arab Newcomer Students

Book excerpt: This book presents Arab immigrant youths’ voices through storytelling that reveals the challenges and achievements they experience at school and at home in a Canadian educational context. While Arab immigration to Canada dates back to the late eighteenth century, Canada has witnessed a significant rise in Arab immigration rates over the last twenty-five years, marking the fastest growth among all immigrant groups.These stories highlight the complexity of Arab-Canadian youths’ cross-cultural schooling experiences and provide valuable opportunities for reciprocal learning among all stakeholders in Canadian schools. With an educator’s vision, Elkord foregrounds the tensions between Arab youths’ home and school experiences to help build bridges and make high school less opaque to Arab immigrant students and their parents, while offering insights into multicultural education and resources for teacher education.