LOGANSPORT — Doh Too, a junior at Logansport High School, leaned over and asked his classmate what page their history homework was on.

The blank stare he received as an answer reminded Doh that this particular classmate was only a Level 1 and could speak very little English.

Doh, an eager Level 5 student, looked around to ask someone who could understand him.

Doh, a Karen-speaking student, was born in Burma in 1994, but his family moved to the United States in 2006. Eventually, Doh ended up attending school in Logansport.

He is not alone. There are 17 other students in Logansport Community School Corporation that have arrived in Logansport from refugee camps in Burma and Thailand.

These students face language barriers and the cultural shock of leaving their homeland, but the adjustment goes both ways. The school corporation also must adjust to accommodate the students and make learning possible, corporate officials said.

“We are doing the best we can,” Superintendent Michele Starkey said. “Each year, we learn more and make minor tweaks here and there.”

Disagreements between an ethnic rebel group in Burma and their government soldiers have caused many refugees to flee to Thailand.

Doh’s family moved to that country in 1996. He spent the next 10 years of his life in a refugee camp, part of an estimated 150,000 refugees who fled the military regime in Burma.

Through the United Nations, Doh, his parents and his three brothers moved to the U.S.

After spending five years in public school systems in Indianapolis, Doh and his family moved to Logansport in June. He started at LHS last fall.

Of the 18 refugee-status students in Logansport, nine attend LHS. Two others attend Lincoln Middle School, and four attend Landis Elementary School. Columbia Middle, Columbia Elementary and Fairview Elementary schools each have one student.

Since moving to Indiana and attending LHS, Doh has grasped the importance of education.

“School is my favorite part of the United States.” Doh said. “Teachers expect the best of us here.”

Doh did not like his schooling in the refugee camp.

“If you graduate high school there, that’s it,” he said. “You can’t move on to college.”

Doh believes that if he were to still live in Thailand, he would be married and working by now, like his friends. Instead, he wrestled this year for LHS.

He also works as a library helper for one period a day.

“Doh just never ceases to amaze me,” said LHS librarian Kim Steele. “He just wants to know what everything means. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Steele assists Doh with his reading skills, the only thing he says he still struggles in.

When students that use English as a second language arrive in LCSC, they take the LAS Links Exam. This is an English proficiency exam that rates students’ ability to read and write English.

These ratings translate into levels. There are five levels — 1 being no English at all and 5 meaning mostly fluent. The level system helps to distinguish how much help each student needs. This, paired with an evaluation of each student’s personality and social ability, is the framework for constructing their class schedules.

Another Karen-speaking student at LHS is 15-year-old freshman Shee Paw.

Shee was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. In 2007, she moved to Fort Wayne with her parents and brother.

After starting elementary school with less than four months left in the school year, Shee said that she remembers taking math tests and having no idea what to do.

“I was scared,” Shee said.

Within the next year, her family moved to Logansport and she started at Columbia Middle School.

Emily Graham is coordinator of the English Learner program at LHS. She said she believes having different cultures in the corporation gives students the chance to become tolerant and accepting of other cultures.

“If you are surrounded by people just like you, that is what you are going to continue to learn about,” she said.

An important distinction about the refugee-status students is that not all of them are Burmese. Many are Karen, like Doh and Shee, and some are Arakanese. These cultures are slightly different in their dialect and principles. LCSC currently has 13 students who speak Burmese as their primary language, four that speak Karen and one Thai-speaking student.

Leanne Little, ENL teacher at Columbia Middle School, is an advocate of learning the difference in these cultures.

“I have taken many chances to teach Caucasian students about the Karen and Arakanese cultures,” says Little.

Shee is one of the students that Little has frequently interacted with. When Shee moved to Logansport in 2008, she was a Level 1 student of Little’s.

Graham says that Little was a tremendous aid to Shee throughout middle school. In eighth grade, Shee even felt comfortable enough to join the cheerleading squad.

“It helped me to make friends,” Shee said.

LHS offers “sheltered” classes for students in the English Learner program. These classes are taught at a slower pace and with more instructional aid. All general education courses are offered.

LHS teacher Cory Cripe has taught English Learner courses for three years. This year he teaches earth science.

Although teaching an English Learner class can be very difficult, Cripe says it helps to have peer tutors like senior Mitsi Franco.

Peer tutoring is a class that LHS offers to its students based on their “desire and ability to work with different populations of students,” said Susan Mordenti, high school guidance counselor.

Franco says that in order to break through the language barrier, she drew lots of pictures for the Karen and Burmese students.

In Cripe’s class, he says even the four Burmese students have trouble understanding each other because of their different dialects.

Another factor preventing students in the English Learner classes from interacting is the level of English they understand.

Doh says that he sometimes wishes he could be surrounded by English-speaking students in order to better his own skills, and that oftentimes he is more fluent than his other English Learner classmates.

While these students adjust to their new homeland, Superintendent Starkey believes many other Logansport community students are learning from their classmates as well, she said.

“The more diversity our students are exposed to, the more well-rounded they will be,” she said.