I didn’t ever tell the head master

Following on from yesterday’s post about how clever I am at making myself feel foolish…

There are a host of other idiocies I uttered while teaching, and I was reminded of one the other day. I had progressed through the ranks and moved from Manchester to Oldham, via Wembley in London. I was a head of faculty, and one of my duties was to fill in a government form listing pupils who were born in other countries, or whose parents were.

It was very important and I did it carefully and conscientiously as some areas of funding depended on it. I was amazed at the different origins of our students, almost every continent, and I forget how many different countries. Many Eastern European people had settled around the Oldham area after the war, many people from Asian countries had come to work in the mills, and there were many of what is now known as ‘the Windrush generation’.

I had to keep track of these students and when one day I realised there was a lad I’d not seen for a while and I asked his friends where he was, they told me he had gone to Brazil. His family were from Bangladesh and I guessed they had moved on from England to Brazil in search of work, just as they’d arrived here years earlier. Brazil? Ashraf has gone to Brazil? How amazing! Let me know if he keeps in touch, I hope all goes well for him! I must have asked why he had gone to a country which I hadn’t realised was a destination for Bangladeshi people, and they told me about other students who had also gone to Brazil. I made sure they were taken off the list.

I wasn’t surprised when a new girl arrived in school who spoke no English and when I asked her friend where she had come from, she also came from Brazil. This was before the days of the internet so I wasn’t able to research Bangladeshi immigration to South America, particularly Brazil. I knew a lot of Japanese people had emigrated there, as one of my dad’s scientific colleagues was a second generation Japanese Brazilian.

I had to see the head teacher about the list, going through the figures with him, and my friend and second in the department came with me as she knew more details about the families and had helped  giving me information. I told the head about the Brazilian connection and he too was surprised but pleased at the international slant it gave our school. I asked my friend something and she’d obviously had an attack of the giggles because she could barely get her words out. Goodness knows what had set her off.

We left the head who was very pleased with the work we’d done. What tickled you?  I asked my friend. Brazil! Brazil! she dissolved into laughter again and it was quite some time before she was able to explain. The missing students hadn’t gone to Brazil, the newcomers hadn’t come from Brazil. It wasn’t Brazil at all but Breeze Hill, another school on the other side of town. I didn’t ever tell the head master.