Arabic students learning about their culture

By REBECCA WALSH education reporter

Emad Al-Zubaidi bends over to pick up a lolly wrapper littering the playground and smiles.

Kids will be kids.

Out on the field children clamber over the adventure playground. A group of boys play cricket on the basketball court.

It is Saturday morning at Windy Ridge School in Glenfield, Auckland, and the father of two is keeping an eye on the troops.

It could be a school anywhere in New Zealand, but if you listen carefully, you will notice it is not English the children are speaking, but Arabic.

Children from Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon are among more than 80 students who come to the school once a week to read and speak Arabic, study maths in Arabic and learn about the Muslim religion.

Mr Al-Zubaidi, concerned that his children would forget their native tongue, set up the school soon after he and his family arrived from Iraq five years ago.

"The idea is to take everything good from the new culture and take the good things from our culture so we will be perfect in New Zealand," he says.

From only seven students, the school, which is run by the Arabic New Zealand Community Education Trust, has grown into classes for children aged from 3 to 13. The six teachers are mainly parent volunteers with no teacher training. They use adapted resources from the United Arab Emirates.

Mr Al-Zubaidi, who was an architect in Iraq and now works as an insurance agent, admits that it was tricky at first trying to encourage students to come to school on Saturdays.

But the problem was easily solved: soccer and netball teams were set up, athletics days held and a lunchroom opened.

And the school has proved a popular meeting point for students and parents.

Zynab Abbas, 9, smiles as she remembers her first day four years ago, when she met her friend Yessar from Iraq.

Yessar lives in Mission Bay and Zynab, who was born in New Zealand soon after her family left Bahrain, lives in New Lynn.

"We do play with other people but if we sometimes feel lonely we come back to each other."

Zynab can speak Arabic, English and some Persian.

She likes the variety of her Saturday morning school.

"We learn something that most of the people don't get to learn. When we grow up we get to teach our children and that would be a very good thing for us."

One of the original students, Mr Al-Zubaidi's 12-year-old daughter Mina, also wants to be able to teach her children Arabic.

She does not find it strange that she has her Arabic friends on Saturday morning and her "English friends" at Takapuna Normal Intermediate during the week.

But after a recent visit to family in Iraq, she notices there is no Arabic music or television here.

"You kind of miss your country in a way ... but Dad says here is better for the future."

Ten-year-old Ali Tahir has been coming to the school for four years, and points out that attending two schools means two lots of homework.

"It's a pain sometimes."

Ali, originally from Iraq, says the thing he likes most about the school are his friends and playing soccer.

Since the school at Windy Ridge started other Arabic schools have been set up, one in Pakuranga and another run by the trust at Westlake Girls' High on the North Shore.

Mr Al-Zubaidi, who was until recently the school principal, says plans are also afoot to set up a five-day-a-week school where English will be the main language but extra lessons will be taught in Arabic.