A new grade, a new school district, a new home, and an entirely new life path – these were the circumstances as my life story continues.
Legal requirements forced my parents to uproot our family of eight from a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Stanton to a house in Garden Grove, which I like to call Garbage Grove. The shift from one school district to another proved to be quite challenging. I had gone from excelling and achieving the highest grades in Magnolia Elementary District to havingmuch lower grades in Garden Grove Unified. This disparity in educational standards shows the unfortunate lack of educational equity across different districts that still exist today.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I wasn’t bullied anymore, because there were plenty of other Asians at Stanford Elementary. I ate lunch alone, and often students would be talking behind my back making fun of me. It was a lot more subtle, and I was still too oblivious to know exactly what was going on. Given what had happened to me previously, this didn’t phase me one bit.
Seeing that I was used to not having friends the first 4 grades, I continued to not have any friends. That was until my 5th grade teacher Mrs. Demaria embarassingly went up to me during recess and said “Le… you’ve been here 3 months now, isn’t it time you made friends?!” That was rather blunt of her to do, and yet….. I am forever thankful she did, because I immediately walked up to a few Asians at a handball court, including Thiep Mai, and made my first set of friends in elementary school. And thus, I leveled up in life, finally making friends, and no longer having to walk around talking to myself and trees at lunchtime. One step closer to normalcy.
