As the class was drawing to a close, a female student cautiously called my name.
She was a refugee student from Afghanistan.
After swallowing once, she spoke in a very small voice:
“Can you help me?” Though short, the sentence was not a simple question about an assignment. It sounded like a request to be included in this classroom.
--- p.17

That was when I first began to think of language not as an “ability,” but as a “right.”
The right to receive explanations in a language one can understand, the right to ask questions, and the right to try again after making mistakes.
The moment that right was not guaranteed, learning could not even begin. The classroom looked like an open space, but invisible lines had already been drawn according to language.
Some learned within those lines, while others waited outside them.
--- p.25

I cannot claim that I will change the world. But I want to be someone who stands beside others so they do not quietly disappear from classrooms.
Not one who leads from the front, but one who waits from behind. Not one who explains, but one who stays beside. This book offers no grand answers. It records my resolve to become such a person.