It’s been a few weeks in his new school and none of his uncle’s dire predictions came true. Nobody was running away from him screaming in fear. And he had friends. Well, Robbie thought Tomlin and Eli were his friends. He and Tomlin had most of the same classes and all three of them were in the same tutor group. And they all hang out together. Eli even invited Rob to come play games with them at Eli’s house on the weekend. So that meant they were friends, right? And all the other kids didn’t seem too bothered by Robbie. Sure, they were curious, like Mary, Mina and Eli were when he first met them, but nobody was mean to him. Besides, he was curious as well. It was mutual curiosity. He grinned to himself proud of the new word he had learned recently. Mutual meant something people had in common.

Robbie got jolted out of his musings as the noise level of the classroom started to settle down. It was their last lesson of the day, the tutor. Rob was sat in the back, on his own, and the desk next to him was Tom and Eli’s but they weren’t there yet. He was in early because his last lesson was in this same classroom and miss Cook allowed him to stay in over the break if he agreed to tidy up a bit. It was nice. Even though he didn’t experience any problems in his new school, the boisterous environment was just a little bit overwhelming for him. His old school was much more regimented when it came to breaks. Students were required to walk slowly down the corridors, and there was a one way system. Then, there were designated exercise areas where they would be able to play during breaks. There was nothing of the sorts here. During breaks students would simply go outside and mingle, then head back when it was time for the next lesson. The lack of structure left Robbie a bit anxious. Miss Cook, who was his tutor, seemed to sense this and gave him this opportunity to avoid the stress. Thanks to that he was the first one in and was sat at his desk early. Other students trickled in, one by one and took their spots, chatting and laughing, filling the classroom with noise. The last few stragglers filed in and Miss Cook looked around checking the classroom, before going to close the door. Just before she could do that a wide eyed Eli sprinted in, huffing and puffing.

“I’m…. Sorry… Miss…” he stammered out between gulped breaths.

Miss Cook raised her eyebrows. “You were lucky. If you were even ten seconds later and I closed these doors I would have marked you as late. Make sure that doesn’t happen again,” she said.

“Yes, Miss,” Eli said contritely as he walked to take his seat by Tomlin who had arrived just a couple minutes earlier.

Miss Cook closed the door and turned to the class. Robbie focused on her fully. He wasn’t sure what type of supernatural she was. She just looked like a young teacher to him. She taught Religious Studies and PSHE and she was his tutor. She was slim and rather short with black hair in a bob and dark brown eyes. She always seemed very nice to him, not stern at all, but there was never any trouble in any of the lessons so he wasn’t sure, maybe she could be stern when it was needed?

“Okay everyone. I have a few notices and reminders that I want to go over first, before we focus on the topic of today’s session, so let’s get that out of the way real quick.” Miss Cook proceeded to give them some information about school competitions, trips and student union announcement. “Okay. I think that’s all for this week’s announcements. Remember, you can find most of this in the student’s bulletin which is published weekly on the school website. Any questions about this part?” Nobody raised their hand and the teacher seemed satisfied. “Good. Let’s move on to the main part of today’s session.” She gestured with her hand and the interactive whiteboard behind her, which up until then was displaying the school bulletin changed to show just one word. Diversity

“Today we are talking about diversity. Does anyone know what diversity means?” Miss Cook paused. There was no hands raised. “Come on, any guesses?” Miss Cook encouraged.

“Iss it about diving?” One boy, Aariv asked. His voice stretched the s sound due to his supernatural race being a Naga descendant, Robbie had learned.

“Not quite, but I see how you could have come to that conclusion based on language dive-diver-diversity.” Miss Cook said. “Any other tries? No? Very well. Diversity means variety in a group. So for example if there are people of different race, gender, culture and religion, we would say it is a diverse group of people. Does that make sense?” Robbie nodded. That did make perfect sense. Diverse. Diversity. He loved learning new words!

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You might be wondering why we are talking about it, though. Aren’t groups usually, diverse? Big groups of people aren’t usually just made only of white, forty-three year old bus drivers called, Dave, right? It’s pretty obvious that groups will be diverse, and the bigger the group, the more diverse it will be.” Miss Cook said, making some students chuckle at her joke. Then she used her clicker and the slide on the the interactive board changed to Learning Objectives. “In today’s lesson you will learn about British values and what they have to say about diversity, you will work as a group to discover, which parts of ourselves make us unique, then we will discuss why it is important that we are allowed to keep our differences and are not forced to all be the same. Finally, we will see if we can think of some examples why diversity makes us better and stronger as a nation.

Robbie loved how lessons in this places were the same and at the same time so very different to what he was used to. In his old school he was used to having tutor group sessions. They would have announcements, they would be given learning objectives, and his tutor would tell them what the lesson would be about. All of this was the same here. He had even learned about British values before. But he was sure that talking about diversity in his old school would be somehow different to talking about it in a supernatural community. He couldn’t wait to see what the other kids would come up with!

Miss Cook divided them into groups and gave each group an envelope with a task. Robbie was in a group with Aariv, a girl called Isla whom he didn’t know very well and another girl, Leila, who he thought was a vampire. He didn’t know much about these kids and hadn’t worked with them previously, but he was determined to do his best.

“Okay everyone. You will have twenty minutes to complete this task. In the envelope you will find descriptions of three people. These people are coworkers who were given a certain task to do as a team. I need you all to read the description very carefully and then discuss the questions on the board.” Miss Cook clicked and three questions showed on the interactive whiteboard. “Question one: why would these people choose to hide certain things about themselves from others on their team? Question two: why would it be good for the team if they revealed those things about themselves? Question three how does revealing these things make things better for everyone on the team in the future?” Miss cook pointed to each question as she read them aloud, then she addressed the classroom again. “Remember everyone, you have twenty minutes. I will give you a warning when half of your time has passed, then again when you have five minutes left. At the end each group will have to tell us about your assigned people and give us the answer to these questions.” Miss Cook paused and made eye contact with all the students. “Now, are there any questions? No? Is everyone clear on what we’re doing? I see a lot of nodding. Very good. I will be walking around the classroom and checking on your progress. Now then, open your envelopes and start!” Miss Cook clapped her hands and all the groups proceeded to do as instructed.

Leila was the one to take charge of the envelope opening it and pulling the pieces of paper out. Four cutouts came out, each with a picture and a description.

“Okay,” Leila frowned, “So there are three people and a description of a task that they need to do. So I suppose one thing for each of us.” She spread the cards on the table so they could all see them. “Hmm, there’s a kitsune secretary, a kappa gardener and a werewolf labourer and this is the task they were given from the company.”

“Um, can I have the task then?” Robbie asked. “I will see what needs to be done and what skills will be needed. I will tell you, then once you know what skills your people have, you will be able to let me know if they can help with the task.”

“Okay,” Leila agreed. “I’ll take the secretary, then.”

“I’ll grab the gardener.” Aariv said, pulling the card towards him.

“I’ll do the labourer then.” Came from Isla.

“So we need to know their skills, but we also need to know why they might want to hide them, right?” Robbie wanted to confirm.

“Yeah, we’re looking for what might make them want to hide useful skills like that.” Leila affirmed. “So those are the two things we are looking for. Let’s read.”

With that decided, they got to work.