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Family stories were recounted from Chinese grandparents’ perspectives with Julian’s grandma, a retired elementary school teacher from Guangdong (Canton), China, as the main character in this chapter. Her family story represents the stories of many other grandparents at the Parent Centre in the school over a period of three years. Important characters in the family stories are Julian, Julian’s little brother Allen, Julian’s parents, and two grandfathers. The stories reveal perceived differences between China and Canada in terms of learning, schooling, child discipline, and childcare; their self and family values in a Confucian tradition; and Chinese grandparents’ sacrifice and contribution to the harmony and growth of the family and society.

Yang Yang, a newcomer boy from Fujian China, was located in the Newcomer Support Class due to his limited English. The glimpses of Yang Yang’s life in and out of school reveal many aspects of his life that appeared to be unseen, either by teachers in the school or by his parents at home. Like many Chinese newcomer students, Yang Yang sometimes seemed to enjoy, but more often struggled in, his unseen life as he traveled in between home and school and in between landscapes of schools in transition. Yang Yang’s story raises many issues on cross-cultural school education, family education, special education, and adolescent education.

Jia Ming, a boy from Shanghai, China, arrived at the Newcomer Support Class of Bay Street Community School in his first year and moved on to an advanced English program for newcomer students in his second year in Canada. The generational narratives of Jia Ming’s family tell the differences between Chinese schools and Canadian schools in terms of parental involvement, the teacher’s role, homework, notions of learning and playing, and educational approaches and expectations. The differences, frustrating as some may seem to be, reveal aspects and necessities of mutual appreciation and reciprocal learning between Chinese parents and Canadian teachers, and between Chinese schools and Canadian schools.

In this chapter, the author explores issues and challenges in the narrative inquiry into Chinese families’ lived experience on landscapes of schools in transition from China to Canada. Entering the research field, the issue of narrative truth became a methodological challenge as the researcher was bounced between the boundaries of educational research. By understanding story as the phenomenon, and narrative as the inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco; 2000), the researcher asked two questions when she was located in a place of stories: “Who tells whose stories and why?” and “Which is true, ‘To see is to believe’, or ‘To believe is to see’?” In this methodologically focussed chapter ethical issues and considerations are also discussed.

In this final chapter, Schwab’s commonplaces are used to sketch and discuss the unseen lives immigrant children live in different curriculum situations – lives that are either unseen by the teacher or unseen by the parent – lives lived in-between shifting visible and invisible boundaries on landscapes in transition when continuity and interaction are missing from their cross-cultural lived experience. These boundaries prevent rich educational resources from being utilized to the best advantage of newcomer families. One of the purposes of this work is to bring these unseen lives to light for cross-cultural and multicultural curriculum and teacher development in terms of educational policy, practice and research, to build multidimensional bridges on landscapes in transition across cultures for reciprocal learning.

To achieve a narrative grip on newcomer families’ stories, Connelly and Clandinin’s (Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1(1), 73–85.1995) notion of landscapes of experience was adopted and further developed to capture the experiential richness and the fluidity of the changing world in which newcomers live. Landscapes in transition is a term that imagines multidimensional, multifaceted, inclusive, and fluid interpretations of experience. The term captures the dimensions in which people move physically and conceptually, personally, and socially. The ideas of individualism and communitarianism and the philosophical notions of Confucian Continuity of Being and Deweyian Continuity of Knowing provide the philosophical/cultural structure for the metaphorical bridge between the East and the West. The educational lives of newcomer children and their families demonstrate the potential and power of reciprocal learning.

Chapter 1 introduces the background, context, key questions, methodology, and participants of the study. The choice of an open-ended fluid inquiry methodology is explained along with the reason why only boys were selected as key participants. Canadian immigration trends are discussed to provide the background and context for the narrative inquiry into Chinese immigrant families’ cross-cultural school experience in Canada. The chapter explains why Chinese people’s search for home in Canada is the focal point of the narrative inquiry. It reveals that the core purpose of the book is to explore the cross-cultural issues in schooling between the East and the West to find ways to bridge cultural and educational values. Reciprocal learning between Chinese newcomer culture and Canadian culture is the goal.

Zhi Gao, a newcomer boy from Guangdong, China, was the last potential participant to be considered for the study due to his behavior difficulties and thus the concern that he might be unwilling to participate. Zhi Gao’s behavior issues reflected the language barriers and cultural dissonance experienced by the boy in his transition between two countries and two educational systems as well as between childhood and adolescence. The frustration and helplessness experienced by the parents and the boy himself reveal the needs for identifying the visible and invisible boundaries in a school system with well-intended programs and rich resources, and a need for Parents’ Aid for despairing parents like Zhi Gao’s mom, whose dreams of a better life and education for their children in a new country are shattered.

Hui Lan, the main character in Chapter 4, is a stay-at-home mother of three children. Her husband works at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto. They hold on to their belief that education plays a crucial role in the future of their boys and the family. They have no regrets for the sacrifices they make as long as it contributes to a better future for the boys. They see the importance of school education as well as the importance of family education. They keep tutoring and modeling for their boys to push them to achieve academic success at school, and at the same time to make sure that they are growing up as good citizens with traditional Chinese humanity and family values.