It's early 1995, and in just a few months Mari Truong and many of the other children will leave the shelter of the Southeast Asian Preschool in St. Petersburg and plunge into the mainstream of American life. Three years later, as 1998 draws to a close, some answers are emerging.
Time moves differently in a classroom filled with young children.
It speeds up without warning, then slows, then accelerates again and hurtles onward even faster. Sometimes, when the students are lost in concentration, building a castle or coloring a picture or looking off into the distance, time simply disappears. Suddenly there is no hour, no clock, no world outside. Only the rhythm of their breathing and the rush of their thoughts, washing across the room in waves. In moments like these, the teachers turn their eyes to Junedy, the boy who has such trouble speaking.