Please, stay

"Please, stay" is an ongoing project about children I teach in a Roma community in Bulgaria. In the classroom, I am not only their teacher, but often a gesture of care, a presence, a fragile point of connection. Outside of it, many grow up in extreme poverty, without stable family structures, guidance, or support. Children become parents while still children themselves, and in doing so, are pushed out of the system and away from the possibility of a different future. School exists as a structure meant to hold them, yet it remains unable to do so. They move between presence and disappearance, carried by forces stronger than any institutional effort. “Please, stay” is both a call and an impossibility.