Driven by Strengths and Choice: Meet MNLEND Fellow Lalinne Suon Bell

As a mother to children who use special education services, a special education professional, a doctoral student in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota, and a MNLEND fellow, Lalinne Suon Bell (2025-2026, pictured in the doorway of a Cambodian temple) has strong ideas about how children are being served by the special education system meant to support and provide services for children with intellectual and other developmental disabilities.

“It seems like the system is set up to measure our students by their deficits, as opposed to their strengths,” Bell said. “As a parent, I was like, ‘That’s not okay to have a system that is set up like that.’ As an educator or a facilitator, I like to think of ways I can create opportunities.”

Bell thinks her commitment to providing choices for families stems from her childhood as a refugee from Cambodia. “During that time, my family had no control. No options. We moved when they told us to move. We did what they told us to do. My family and I felt trapped.”

Bell’s family was ordered to live in several locations before settling in Rochester, Minnesota, when she was about five years old. “As a child, I had to assimilate so fast,” Bell adds. “It wasn’t until my teenage years that I realized that I had a feeling of not belonging. This feeling informed the way I look at students I work with who have a disability. They are forced to try to fit into norms, and if you can’t, that means you could go to a more restrictive environment. People are encouraged to be ‘normal,’ to fit in, and that means they are really not allowed to fully be themselves.”

In the summer of 2025, Bell went back to Cambodia to work with people who had been deported there. “I created space for them to share their stories, I collected their stories, and created an anthology ,” Bell said. The result is Reclaiming the Return: Artivitism for Returnees, which is a community-based project that hopes to amplify the narratives of Cambodian returnees and is available online. “I spent time with people who, like me, were shaped by genocide and displacement,” Bell said. “Their stories made me realize I have a shared history with these people. I was also a returnee by choice.”

In Bell’s opinion, it is not really the trauma that defines people but it’s how they dealt with the trauma. “How do people make meaning out of their lives?” Bell asks. “How do education and storytelling influence who belongs?”

Bell believes people have their own dignity and agency and she’s focused on providing opportunities for people to share, reflect, and create. “I see my role as a facilitator,” she said. “This ties into the work I’m doing in my PhD program. I’m focused on restorative pedagogy because it recognizes historical and ongoing harms while creating space for people to reclaim identity, narrative, belonging, and agency so they can realize their fullest potential.”

Bell says she’s grateful for her MNLEND fellowship at the Institute on Community Integration because it provided opportunities to be with people of different backgrounds and to questions assumptions and learn how to be a true leader. The Minnesota Leadership in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (MNLEND) fellowship helps to develop the next generation of leaders in the neurodevelopmental disabilities field.

Bell’s academic work includes investigating the idea of reclamation. “If we can’t fully face ourselves, and we can’t fully be who we are, how can we reach our fullest potential?” she asked. “This applies to everybody and includes the students I work with who have a disability.”

During her time in Cambodia, Bell found value in the conversations she had with deportees. “I’m a lifelong learner and enjoy doing academic research, but, in my opinion, you can do all the research, write all the articles, get peer reviews, but that doesn’t equal the experience you get from all the people around you. It’s the lived experience that is exciting for me,” she said.

“I maintain these relationships because they are meaningful to me,” Bell added. “I believe deeply in reclamation: the reclamation of identity, narrative, belonging, and the right to define ourselves. When people are able to reclaim parts of themselves that have been taken away, dismissed, or defined by others, they can begin to imagine possibilities for themselves beyond those limitations.”

Bell is part of a group hosting a fundraiser for Cambodian deportees. Beyond Deportation: Rebuilding Lives in Cambodia will be held Monday, Sept. 21, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Crooners Supper Club in Minneapolis.