Over the past fifty years or so, the teaching of culture in the language classroom has drawn growing awareness and interest on the part of administrators, teachers and students alike. While very significant milestones have been reached through the creation of curricula and standards that emphasize culture not as the fifth language skill but rather as an intrinsic part of language itself, there still exists no real consensus on what it means to teach culture, due in great part to the all-encompassing nature of the very concept of culture. This absence of clear boundaries offers language teachers the perfect opportunity for creativity and experimenting. The present pilot study is an attempt to create a novel framework to the teaching and learning of culture in the Arabic language classroom. While the teaching of culture should not be equated to the teaching of mere facts about the target culture, it remains true that students still need to be knowledgeable about a "basic repertoire of information necessary for the comprehension of most cultural concepts" (Lafayette 1988). The idea behind this study is to establish what this basic repertoire could look like for the foreign student of Arabic. A questionnaire of eight open-ended questions was created and administered to 30 Arabs, asking them about some of the most significant cultural events or memories in their personal life. Topics varied from literature and arts, to sports, politics and pop culture. The results of the survey were analyzed and categorized, thus creating a pool of cultural data that represents multiple voices and experiences. This study presents the survey results as well as a lesson plan for the Arabic language classroom based on some of the data gathered. The most novel aspect of this study is the data selection method: the data pool came directly from the participants, instead of being imposed by a single scholar. Also, while it offers insights into facts and artifacts about Arab culture(s) (knowing about), it also includes personal stories that illustrate broader attitudes and belief systems (knowing why), thus anchoring impersonal information into the human experience. In addition, this study attempts to define some of the possible constants of Arab culture, those aspects of the collective memory that were most salient in the participants' minds.