It’s late afternoon at First School, the preschool that belongs to First Baptist Church of Decatur. Irena Seferovic sits on the floor, a toy truck in her hands. She’s surrounded by a group of kids between two and five. Irena is originally from Bosnia, and in June she will be the school’s new director. That would have been impossible to imagine when she started working here 23 years ago, she says.
“I did not know any language,” she says. She only understood the word ‘Hi’ – “and the difference between my ‘son’ and the ‘sun’ in the sky, but nothing else.”
It was a very difficult start, she continues, but the school still gave her a job, and she was grateful. The school became a family, she says.
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