With partners:
Student Snapshot
Here a group of non-Arabic students discuss their experience of being the minority culture in their school and the personal conflict that can engender for them:
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean by that? (reference to not being able to be oneself)
STUDENT: Like, trying to be comfortable with yourself, because, like to be yourself really is to be, like, to be happy for me, you know, because you don't wanna follow a group of certain people, and follow what they do, and be peer pressured by them.
INTERVIEWER: When you say they do different things and you don't want to be peer pressured, what specifically are you talking about?
STUDENT: How people, the Arabs, how they try and make you be stupid in class, like to, so they say, 'Oh, you're in our group' or something like that.
INTERVIEWER: Are you saying that the Arabic students often misbehave?
STUDENT: I've seen one class,
STUDENT: You can have someone from, you can have one Arabic student be really good, you have one Arabic student that's not, who's a troublemaker, but you can also have an um, an Australian student who's really good and an Australian student who's not. It's every culture, not just the Arabic society.
INTERVIEWER: So you don't really see any pattern in terms of groups' behaviours?
STUDENT: It's just seen that way because most of the students IS Arabic.
Student Snapshot 1
FEMALE STUDENT: At the school, because it’s all multicultural, there’s not many Aussie kids. I’ve noticed they tend to get left out of everything.