This article is based on a case study of the school life of Fatou, a newly arrived adolescent student with limited experiences of formal schooling. Drawing on Goffman's theories on impression and stigma management, the article explores the techniques employed by Fatou in order to pass as a "normal" student in the mainstream classroom. The results point to the significance of institutional frameworks in these efforts, and show how Fatou and her teachers collectively employ different impression management techniques in order to downplay the mis-match between Fatou's prior knowledge and the academic demands of the classroom. As a result, it is argued that for Fatou, school becomes a place where, rather than learning subject content, she is "learning to pass".