A teacher’s journey: a first-person account of how a gay, Cambodian refugee navigated myriad barriers to become educated in the United States

Abstract

Educational institutions, like most social service organizations, need to recognize intersectionality and complexity and move away from monolithic conceptions of homelessness – if they recognize homelessness at all. This first person account of a gay, Cambodian refugee illustrates the enormous complexity schools face in forming institutional responses for the needs of homeless, highly mobile, and economically displaced children and youth. This article demonstrates an effort to avoid reductionist definitions of homelessness and to include experiential representations of humans living at the margins (under the 5th Avenues of the world, in central parks, in downtown shelters, outside of the ethical and systemic “home” of current ideologies and social orders, under the politics of HIV in Africa, as refugees and as those “othered” by dominant social narratives). The research takes place in the context of the At Home At School program at Washington State University.

Keywords:

• homelessness
• intersectionality
• Cambodian refugee
• Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students
• gay teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.