In was the beginning of 2019, Hser-Nay was walking down a hallway when some of the students in the public schools start taunting and bullying her best friend, who was also a Karen refugee.

Hser-Nay had often been taunted herself, but she never fought back. Her friend was crying.  The other kids began hitting and pushing the girl, also a Karen refugee, Hser-Nay decided to intervene.

She was beaten so brutally that she fell to the ground, unconscious, and was rushed to a hospital.  She had a concussion and was held overnight.

She told me this story as we sat at a table in the Bishop Maginn High School Principal’s office Tuesday, it was very difficult for her to talk about what happened. I’ve wanted to interview her ever since I met her earlier in the year, but the pandemic got in the way.

In a sense, this girl is the reason I care so much about Bishop Maginn. I can’t imagine what these children would do without them.

Outside the door, the heads of two of her new friends kept popping up to look into the conversation. I asked Sue Silverstein what they were doing, “oh, she said, they are two of her best friends, they are just checking to make sure she’s all right.”

She was and all right and much better than that.

She says she has a lot of friends at Bishop Maginn, is busy with homework and activities and friends, and is happier there than she has ever been. They all take care of each other there, she said. I doubt she could ever say those words before in her life.

Hser-Nay’s story has inspired me to plan a mentor/adopt-a-kid program for the Army Of Good and some of the refugee children. Some of them could use a hand from time to time.

Details to come.

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Hser-Nay is a freshman now at Bishop Maginn High School in Albany, New York, and it was quite a journey to get there.

The school, a private Catholic school, has a rich and loving history of taking in refugee children, making them safe, and steer them towards college. They don’t talk the talk, they walk the walk there.

I’ve been volunteering there (with Red and then Zinnia) for more than two years now, it is some of the most wonderful work I have been blessed to do.

Hser-Nay plans to go to college. Her family wants her to be a doctor or lawyer, she says. The Karen kids don’t plan their futures, as a rule, their parents decide for them. Like immigrant families throughout history, their wish is for their children to have better lives than they had.

Her story is both wrenching and inspiring and she is one of the many reasons I have come to love  Bishop Maginn High School and the people who work there so much and fight for this embattled school every chance I can.

Hser-Nay’s story is about the best and worst of America and the best and worst of American education. The school is wealthy in teachers and administrators who really care.

My wish for every school child is that they fund such love and support.

Hser-Nay was born in a Thailand refugee camp, her family had fled one of the dozen state massacres that devastated the Karen people in Southeast Asia. More than 400,000 Karen people are still without housing, and 128,000 of them are living on the Thailand-Burma border.

I hear these stories all the time from the refugee kids at Bishop Maginn, sometimes they make me numb, but I rarely forget what these kids have been through and how they so often triumph in the end. Americans, in their cushy lives, whine continuously, these children never do.

Hsen-Nay is shy about talking about the camp, where she spent seven years, but remembers it being very hot at times, and very cold at others. There was never enough food. They could build their own huts if they could get hold of the wood.

These children are never bitter and never complain,

Hser was born in 2006. The family was always struggling for good, they were able to scavenge enough wood to build a hut for the four of them, Hser’s parents and she and her brother.

She came to the United States in 2014 when some Karen refugees were permitted to emigrate to America. None are permitted now.

Her family had some relatives living in the Albany area, so they came there.

Hser-Nay went to an Albany public middle school.

She noticed right away that the refugee children in the school were taunted and bullied constantly. Hser-Nay is a profoundly sweet and gentle girl, she refused to fight back, she just tried to endure it.

She had been through worse. If anyone ever tried to leave her refugee camp, the Thai police would arrest them.

I’ve talked to enough refugees to know that public schools often simply can’t or don’t try to stop the bullying and even the physical abuse the refugee kids often encounter.

There is a young man at Bishop Maginn whose hair was set on fire in the local high school. He still can’t talk about it. The students who beat up Hser-Nay were expelled.

The public schools are overwhelmed, understaffed, and the refugee students are notoriously shy and reluctant to complain. If they do complain, things just get worse for them.

After she was released from the hospital,  Laura Anedio, a social worker who works with the Karen Community called St. Thomas Catholic school, a middle school, they admitted Hser-Nay instantly, even though the family couldn’t pay the tuition.

She finished the school year there and then the social worker called Mike Tolan and Sue Silverstein at Bishop Maginn, Hser-Nay needed to go to a high school. The social worker thought Bishop Maginn would be the perfect place.

“It was so different here,” she told me. “The teachers are all so wonderful. The other students kept coming up to me and telling me I was safe there, nobody would hurt me, it was a good place to be.”

Principal Tolan, who sat with us during the interview, said the school is careful to nourish an environment that is safe and tolerant, “we don’t try to intimidate people here.”

And, he said, the school has many refugee and inner-city students, they accept different people and watch out for each other.

All through the interview, I kept watching this shy, sweet, and endearing child, and wonder why anybody would want to hurt her so badly. I have no answer. I know the refugee children have been subject to relentless bullying since Donald Trump became President and targeted immigrants as rapists and killers and drug dealers.

Hser said she had to protect her friend, “she is very sensitive.” She was crying, she said and asking for help. It touched my heart to hear this. User suffered enough in her life, she didn’t need to get knocked unconscious in an American school.

She said her favorite musical group is the Korean Girl K-Pop group Black Pink. (I found a Black Pink shirt online and sent it to her.) She also loves graphic novels like Sisters. (I send her several)

Sue Silverstein said the teachers were all told about the beating – Sue came to know Hser and the family well – and they all got together to encourage Hser-Nay, praise her work and progress, make her feel safe and engaged. Over some months, she came out of her shell and just glowed, says Mike Tolan.

A number of students heard about the assault – they know some of the kids involved – and they also adopted her and befriended Hser right away and made sure she didn’t eat alone or get frightened or have no one to hang around with.

Sue Silverstein tells me that one of her happiest sights is to come into her classroom at lunch and see Hser and her friends dancing and singing to K-Pop and laughing and singing together.

I am aware that a reader of the blog contacted the school after I first wrote about her last year and generously offered to “adopt” Hser, that is support her, pay some of her tuition, and help her when needed.

These people have never talked to me about the great work they have done with Hser-Nay, but I am grateful to them. They will keep an eye on her all the way to college, they told the school.

Blessings to you, whoever you are.

Sue invited Hser and her family to come and work in the school’s vegetable gardens last summer. The food grown there goes to a local food pantry. It was her way of getting to know Hser-Nay and her family.

Hser is in a special SAT class, an English as Second Language (ESL) class, she’s also joined the school’s photography and dance clubs. “We love to watch her blossom,” Sue said, “I cry when I see her dancing, she is one of our happiest students.”

As the interview ended, I asked Hser if it would be all right for me to take a photo of her with her two friends, the ones who were worried about her because she was called into the principal’s office (to talk to me.)

Their love for one another was palpable.

As it happened, they were still hovering outside the principal’s office.

(Hser-Nay, left,  and her best peeps. They can’t touch because of the virus.)

She said sure and I took this photo as I said goodbye. Definitely, something to lift the heart.

Hser-Nay told me she often thinks of her friends in the May-La-Too Refugee Camp in Thailand. They and their families are all still there. She still writes them letters.  They can’t get any visas any more to come to America. She prays for them often.

I will also keep an eye on this very special human. I’ll keep sending her Graphic Novels as well as the T-shirt.