Bridging the Gap Documentary - Trailer
Currently there are 82.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. It is estimated that 51,000 refugee and protected persons have come to Canada in 2021, and this number continues to increase. Devastatingly, many newcomer families fall through the cracks of our educational system. To address this heartbreaking truth, a team led by Dr. Rahat Zaidi from the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary has partnered with filmmaker Nina Sudra to produce a film that will act as a tool for educators nationwide.
The documentary, Bridging the Gap, aims to examine immigrant anxiety and traumas as they relate to wellness and mental health, and will empower newcomer families by giving voice to them as they share their stories. The goal is to foster productive and positive relationships between resettled families and school/university partners. In addition, the project will create a professional development resource accessible on multiple platforms for school boards, offering them a resource to use when exploring newcomer families’ successful integration into the school system.
This film project is currently underway, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. To date, two families have been interviewed and filmed. Our aim is to match the $25 000 in government funding to expand the scale and the scope of the project. The end goal is to create a lasting impact for displaced families. Join us in making this film project a reality. Join us in giving voice to these deserving new Canadians.
2023 AERA Annual Meeting in Chicago
On behalf of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), our team of high school student researchers was selected to participate in the AERA Youth Teams in Education Research Program (YTER) at the 2023 Annual Meeting in Chicago.
This special initiative was designed to showcase the work of high school students who were using research tools to answer critical questions about education and to cultivate students’ knowledge of and interest in the field of education research. YTER attracted scores of proposals from youth teams from across the United States and around the globe. The selection committee was impressed with the quality of our proposal and the substance of the work that the student researchers on our team was doing.
The teams of youth researchers participated in a program of activities that included presenting their work in a featured Annual Meeting poster session, taking part in a mini workshop, attending selected conference sessions, engaging with leading scholars in the field, and networking with other youth researchers.
Activism and Advocacy During Troubled Times: A Roadmap for Improved Practices Among Newcomer Youth
This two-year study took place in a rural high school in Western Canada, with approximately 35% of the students identifying as a visible minority. It represented a transformational experience for the researchers, the student participants and the school’s administration. Through a multi-layered approach involving the student body, focus groups, surveys, social media, and dialogue, the researchers came to a better understanding of newcomer and 1.5 generation students’ experiences and uncovered the racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious challenges that these students so often face. Among these were a lack of recognition and awareness about religion (e.g., holiday observances and prayer times), personal and family pressure to perform academically, racism, fear of backlash for cultural/ religious events, and lack of involvement/ connection to the school. The process afforded the school an opportunity to heighten awareness and understanding of the power of self-advocacy and to encourage racial literacy in authentic discussions.
The session highlighted the unique nature of the relationship among administration, researchers, educators and student participants, and discussed how challenges were overcome through engaging students in proactive social justice initiatives. These included the creation of multimodal content (social media advocacy posts) that incorporated the pertinent themes revealed through the focus groups, and the formation of an advisory board that identified urgent issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion. The presenters demonstrated how three distinct, but related levels (the micro (classroom, school), the meso (community), and the macro (provincial and/or national level practices and policies) could work together to improve the way in which education systems interact with newcomer/racialized students. Additionally, the presentation offered insights into and underscored the implications of how best educational practices can be addressed, particularly for newcomer students and pre-/in-service educators.
Research Team
Dr. Rahat Zaidi; Michelle Veroba; Joseph Octavious; Cindy Li; Kanaalaq Hoyland; Nikki Kasaba; and Selma Abdulkadir