Although the school used to take a leading role in the linguistic and cultural homogenization of the society by demonstrating indifference to linguistic and cultural diversity, today it must approach classroom uniformity differently, in order to take into consideration the linguistic and cultural knowledge and experiences of the students. Starting from an action-research done in a French-speaking elementary school, the article studies the contribution of the school to building a pluralistic society, and more specifically, its role in the students’ identity-construction process. The research is based on the analysis of the identity (re)configurations of Maghrebian students who have immigrated in France. It reveals identity figures that exceed the boundaries of an identity in which their usual way of seeing the world and their modes of thinking and expression restrict them to a unique, narrow view that is separate from the group identity. It shows how the different players in the classroom (teachers, and especially students) a) make the initially collective entity, the classroom, obsolete, b) break out traditional theoretical frameworks being used c) propose, by showing their diversity and by bringing out the overall differences in groups that were formerly homogenous and closed, a redefinition of the role the school should take in dealing with this complexity, whether pedagogically, socially or individually.