Abstract
This chapter presents the story of Safa, a Somali girl who returns with her transnational family to her native Canada and faces culture shock, language difficulties, and other personal issues as a high school student. Safaʼs story reveals how her dedication, work ethic, and aspirations for academic success combined with her family’s support afforded her the opportunity to adjust and achieve her goals. The story features stages of Safa’s family life in Canada, in Somalia, and back again in Canada 11 years later. The intersecting narratives of Safa, her mother, and school teachers touch on family values, traditions, aspirations, as well as the tensions that impact a newcomer student’s adjustment throughout the transition, mainly from Safa’s perspective.
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise noted, all participants’ citations were translated from Arabic to English as accurately as possible in order to retain both the content and tone of participants’ narratives.
Reference
Astronaut family. (2018). In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 13, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut_family.
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Elkord, N. (2019). Between Canada and Somalia. In: Cross-Cultural Schooling Experiences of Arab Newcomer Students. Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14420-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14420-3_3
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14420-3
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