Saray Im didn’t know where to go on his first day of elementary school.
He remembered his dad dropping him off and that he struggled to navigate campus grounds on his own. Nobody told him where to go, and he didn’t speak any English at the time.
Im, who is now 45, had recently arrived in the United States with his father, stepmother and sister after spending a few years at a refugee camp in Thailand. They had fled the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, under which more than 2 million people died. Among those who perished was Im’s brother, he recalled his father telling him.
