A reflection of my own experiences of culture and identity at school.

Culture and identity are two very important aspects in relation to education as they can influence a student’s experience in school. My first primary school was at Homebush Public School which is located in the inner-west area and I stayed at that school between kindergarten to Year 4. From the beginning of primary school, I was placed in an ESL class as I had difficulty with English however; I began to improve drastically as I moved around friendship circles. By the time I was in Year 3, my circle of friends including people of different ethnic groups such as Indians, Lebanese, and Turkish. Through being part of this multicultural group, I was able to improve on my English speaking skills as I was forced to communicate in English with them. Overall,  I enjoyed my time at school and the bond I had with my friends, thus when I learned that I had to move schools due to family inconveniences, I was worried because I wasn’t ready to adapt to a new environment and form a new circle of friends.  Nevertheless, I quickly made new friends in my new school and they consisted of mainly Chinese and Korean girls. I enjoyed meeting new Korean friends because in my old school, there weren’t many in my grade and hence, I learned many new things about Korean culture such as their greetings, their sense of fashion and their cuisine. In my new school, we had an event once a year which was a day where each student would bring a plate of food from our own ethnic group. It was a great day because we were allowed to try all sorts of cuisines and hence expand our knowledge on different cultural groups. My time in my new school went by very quickly and by 2007, I started high school at Strathfield Girls High School. In my high school, there were a huge number of Korean girls and since I was friends with Korean girls in my primary school, I felt very comfortable and natural when I was around them and I eventually met my best friend who is also a Korean girl. My sense of identity began to form within my high school years as I felt a sense of belonging in my group which were all Chinese or Vietnamese girls. Other students in my grade would give different groups labels and my group was known as the “cooler Asians” because we could speak English fluently and we had a more Western approach to life compared to other Asian girls who were known to be “FOBS” because they spoke in Mandarin majority of the time and showed a strong sense of Asian norms and practices. Attending high school enabled me to continue to learn about different cultural groups and this is evident through my experiences in Japanese, Italian, French and Chinese classes which were mandatory in Years 7 and 8. In these classes, we learned how to speak some of their basic language, and were informed on their cultural practices and because I enjoyed these lessons, I continued to study it in years 9 and 10. In Wadham, Pudsey and Boyd’s ‘Culture and Education’, they state that culture shapes much of our lives and decision making and I think that this statement applies to my experiences at school as it’s through my Chinese culture which influenced me to continue to study the language in years 9 and 10. Overall, education has enabled me to be exposed to different people of different cultures and through the experience of learning new things and being around people, I was able to form my own sense of identity.

Academic Source:

Wadham, B, Pudsey, J and Boyd, R, ‘Culture and Education’ Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest N.S.W 2007, p.8.