Victor Tam
Elementary School Principal and Lifelong Learner in San Francisco, California
I am an immigrant. My family and I immigrated to the United States years ago. Growing up, life was challenging. We faced so much as a newcomer immigrant family - and individually - living in a largely "black and white" world. My parents worked incredibly hard for our family so that the kids would have a better life than their own. Today, my siblings and I are privileged because of the sacrifices our parents made for us. With this, I am so honored, privileged, and obligated to serve as the principal of the Edwin and Anita Lee Newcomer School (formerly, the Chinese Education Center), a public elementary school for newcomer immigrant students. It is part of the San Francisco Unified School District. I am fortunate in my life to have come full-circle - to be in a position to provide help and support to Chinese-speaking, newly-arrived immigrant students and families facing struggles similar to what I lived.
Additionally, we find ourselves in desperate times. The foundation of our democracy is in jeopardy. Reza Azlan shared it most eloquently:
“We, too, right now, are facing an existential crisis and that anyone who has any measure of a voice has a responsibility to future generations to use that voice to scream at the top of our lungs that we are facing a crisis unlike anything that this country has ever seen before. We have had many, many external enemies in this country that we have fought and we have defeated. Right now we have an internal enemy in the White House and History is looking at us, and if you are not screaming, ‘FIRE!’ at the top of your lungs, then you deserve to have the house burn down on you.”
FIRE!!! FIRE!!! FIRE!!!