When the girl in the dress would see the boy (ELL) cry to himself during transitions of class activities it motivated her to volunteer peer support. She holds his hand without understanding a word he said. Yet, seeking other peers to translate for him. He cries much less now. Nobody knows his story, except now through pictures he draws. He speaks through images of the hope and beauty of this world. The events he has faced many in a lifetime will never experience. What led his family to escape is an autocratic government full of corruption, human-inflicted famine, and severe economic crisis. The rise of a dictatorship transformed the once oil-rich country in South America into a poverty-stricken zone. His tears reflect the pain he feels remembering his late mother. The drawings show images of how he arrived in an airplane and what he saw when he arrived such as large houses  mansions, flowers, and a first-grade teacher waiting to greet him daily in the morning. He delights in non-verbal Disney shorts with colorful, utopian imagery  it is the only time I get to see him smile.