“For Eid we have to call in sick and I don’t like that. You should have the day off school. And everybody gets a holiday….Not everybody celebrates it, people just want to have a day off. Having Eid, I fasted 30 days, like a month and I had to call in school and say, I’m not showing up because it’s Eid.’ They should know and I shouldn’t have to call in.” — Abdoul, research participant.
“When it’s Christmas, we have two weeks off, right? Even though we don’t celebrate, we still take two weeks. But in Eid time…we have to come to school. So if we can get [a day] off, that will be a big encouragement to our religion.” — Fatma, research participant.
These were some of the sentiments racially diverse students in Brooks Composite High School in southern Alberta expressed when my research assistants and I interviewed them for our inquiry into the challenges they experienced as they integrated into the Canadian school system.
I am a research professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. In 2021, my team and I at the university’s Transliteracies Lab (which studies the experiences of refugees, immigrants, newcomers and settlers in Alberta’s schools and communities) began working with Brooks Composite High School, located in a rural town in Alberta.
