Experiences of “Hospitality” by Racialized Immigrant Pre-service Teachers on Canadian School Landscapes: A Phenomenological Perspective

Abstract

Through a phenomenological perspective, we frame the experiences of “hospitality” of racialized immigrant student teachers as they recount their field placements in a number of Canadian schools. This article presents the following themes which emerged from the study, and which also serve as section titles: 1) The classroom door as threshold: Crossing workaday and festive worlds; 2) More foreign than foreign; Stranger than strange; 3) You are who I think you are; Not who you know you are; 4) Actively inviting the threshold; Passively accepting the barrier; 5) Sensing the cold: The hostility in hospitality as hostil/pitality?; 6) The hiddenness of potential: Growing in foreign soil; 7) The strangeness of Canadian students: Hospitality beyond hospitality; 8) Inspiriting the festive: Pedagogy as hospitality. The paper concludes by showing that living hospitably with the foreign-other on the Canadian school landscape is not so much a problem as it is an invitation for teachers to realize the call of their vocation.