It’s field day, June 2018, at Earl Boyles Elementary School in Southeast Portland.

Among the fifth graders celebrating with games and cold snacks, Munira strategizes with her team.

Taller than most of her classmates with the tail of her pink hijab flowing, she finds her spot along a thick rope in a game of tug-of-war.

Munira’s team loses, but her big smile never diminishes. She dusts herself off, helps her teammates off the ground and opens up a green freeze pop. Munira is an American girl, enjoying her final days of an elementary school she loved.

Eight years later, all but five of the 25 students in OPB’s Class of 2025 project graduated from high school on time, similar to the Oregon average of 83%.

The paths of those students varied significantly: some had to overcome tragedies and disruptions, while others changed schools multiple times; for others, it was a struggle to earn crucial credits in time to cross the graduation stage.

But no one had a path like Munira’s.

Growing up in Portland, Munira was close to her Somali parents and siblings, and had a fierce activist spirit. She was passionate about a range of issues on the minds of Americans, from school gun violence to the portrayal of Indigenous people in the media.

But it wasn’t until she had to leave Oregon that Munira found her true passion — and took the steps required to graduate from high school and enroll at Portland State University.

“My main goal in life was to help people or to be that person for someone,” Munira said in a December interview on PSU’s campus.

A young activist

As a member of OPB’s Class of 2025 project, Munira was repeatedly asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.

The first time was in first grade.

Near the end of the video, Munira, fidgeting with her braids, says she wants to be a school principal.

“Why do you want to be a principal,” Manning asked?

“To make the place a better world,” Munira responded.

Munira is Muslim, and she was born in the U.S. to Somali parents who arrived in Portland after living in a refugee camp in Kenya.

“I would like to live in Africa and I want to see my mom’s animals from Africa, too,” she said in an OPB audio story from 2014. “She has horses, giraffes and goats and chickens, and I don’t know the rest.”

Above, listen to OPB’s story from 2014, featuring Munira and her family.

As a kid, Munira was bubbly and outspoken, one of six children in her family.

“I love reading,” she said when she was eight years old. “It’s mostly about how easy the words are.”

She liked to read chapter books about Tinkerbell.

In 2017, Munira was a 10-year-old in fourth grade.

OPB talked with her about her family and her history. She was good at math — and she enjoyed it.

That same year, President Donald Trump was taking office for the first time, enacting the first of his “America First” policies, including his travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries, including Somalia.

But it was Trump’s plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it that got Munira’s attention when OPB asked Class of 2025 students about the new president’s policies.

“I really don’t like what he’s doing about the wall and what he’s trying to do to get the money,” Munira said.

As she moved through elementary school, Munira spoke her mind. In fifth grade, she led a small school walkout against gun violence after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in Florida.

She told OPB how she used her presentation on Pocahontas to call out inaccuracies in the Disney movie.

“I want to fix most problems, especially with my siblings,” she shared.

Munira moved on to Ron Russell Middle School for sixth grade, along with most of OPB’s Class of 2025.

She had a group of friends who loved pulling pranks on teachers. She still liked math, but it was getting tougher. After a field trip to Lewis and Clark College, she wanted to be a lawyer.

“We did this role play, it was based on Harry Potter,” she explained. “I got to be the cross examiner and the witness.”

Even though Munira was doing well academically and enjoyed hanging out with her friends at school, she preferred being home with family.

She had plans to take it easy for the summer before seventh grade.

“Stay home and do nothing,” she said. “I did have a whole school year doing something, so I’m going to take the time to relax,” Munira said, ”and if I would get bored, I have four annoying siblings to take care of that.”

But that summer, she didn’t stay home.

A different type of education, halfway across the world

Once sixth grade was over, Munira and her family traveled to Kenya.

“When I first got on the plane, my mom told me I was going to get my own room,” Munira explained in an interview in December 2025.

“I was super excited for that — not sharing with my sisters, fantastic! I will gladly go to a different country.”

Munira said her mom wanted Munira and her siblings to go to Kenya to finish learning the Quran and meet their grandmother.

“I really did not want to go,” Munira said. “I just wanted to appease my mom.”

When she first arrived, the main focus was religious school, with long days studying the Quran and not much else.

By the time Munira was high-school-aged, she was going to school in Nairobi. But she found she was learning things in ninth grade that she had learned back in sixth grade at Ron Russell.

Moving from her home to a new country as she was entering her teen years was challenging. She felt alone.

“Eventually, I got angry. I got mad. I got upset,” Munira said.

“I had no one to talk to, no one to turn to,” she said. “The teachers that you have are very much pro-parent … pro-corporal punishment.”

Her mental health — and her relationship with her mother — suffered. First-generation children of immigrants can face challenges and a lack of understanding when it comes to mental health issues.

“I was in a depressive state,” Munira said of her time in Kenya. “My mom did not recognize it, I didn’t even recognize it at the time.”

But through those challenges, Munira learned something about herself.

“I hate the fact that I was in Kenya when I was younger, but I’m also kind of glad because I feel like it was a wake-up call,” she said.

“I wasn’t aware of myself and what I wanted, and I think I’m grateful for the experience that I had. I hated every moment of it, but it was a learning experience.”

Munira remembered pretending to be sick, so she wouldn’t have to memorize and recite pages of the Quran. She even started crying. Munira recalls her teacher letting her go home, saying they didn’t expect her to do the assignment anyway.

“A hundred bad days equals 100 good stories,” she said.

Back in Portland

By 2023, Munira was ready to go back to high school.

She spent time in Kenya looking back at OPB’s Class of 2025 footage, excited to return home.

In one old Class of 2025 clip from 5th grade, Munira hugs her friends tightly as more and more students join in. She’s smiling ear to ear as the group hug gets bigger.

But living in Kenya, she lost contact with those friends.

However, in reminding herself of her life in Portland, she affirmed her aspirations.

“I was like, ’2025. That’s the year I’m going to graduate. That’s the year I’m going to go back to America,” Munira recalled.

Munira could feel the clock ticking. She had to graduate, but how?

She learned about an online school called Penn Foster. She enrolled in the virtual program in September 2023 after a four-year absence from traditional schooling.

Sixteen months later, Munira graduated with her high school diploma as part of the Class of 2025.

“I wanted to say I have my high school diploma,” she said. She didn’t want a GED. “There were so many things that were taken away from me. I didn’t want one name change to make a difference between me and other people.”

In June 2025, Munira came back to Portland, ready to start freshman year at Portland State University. At least she thought she was ready.

“I was so lost when I came to PSU,” Munira said.

She relied on what she used to do back in elementary school: ask for help from her friends and teachers.

“I still remember all my teachers’ names from back in the day and how they impacted me and the relationship I had with them,” Munira said.

“Most of the teachers here are very passionate about their jobs, so if you ask them a certain thing about a topic and they light up … it’s great if you don’t understand.”

Munira said thinking about getting back to Portland helped her stay resilient when she was struggling.

Now that she’s back, she’s settling into her young adult life. She got a job and a driver’s license — though she’s still nervous about driving.

Now, Munira is focused on her future.

Her time in Kenya, although she felt disempowered as a young person, provided direction on where she wants to go and what she wants to do.

“When it comes to kids specifically, people don’t think they have the capacity to both self-advocate or know what’s right for them,” Munira said. “I am a political science major. I do want to go more into rights and stuff for people, specifically with the youth. I want to be that person that I needed when I was younger.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/03/06/how-class-of-2025-student-munira-found-her-way/