Imagine being a young child driven from your home by a military-controlled government and fleeing with your family to a refugee camp across an international border.

Then imagine leaving that camp to fly across the globe to a distant country where you don't speak the language -- and having to go to school.

Fourteen children and their families, all refugees from the east Asian country of Burma, or Myanmar, faced just such a situation in December after being relocated to the Meadow Lane Apartments, in Arbutus, by an international rescue organization.

Awaiting them when they enrolled at Halethorpe Elementary School were principal Jill Bordenick and her staff.

"At first, we really knew very little about the kids and their culture," Bordenick said. "Some of my most experienced teachers were even a little bit concerned."

According to the U.S. State Department, the 140,000 refugees in 10 camps along the Burma-Thailand border represent the largest single east Asian refugee population receiving funds from the department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

Many of the Halethorpe students came from the camps across their country's border with Thailand.

When they enrolled at the school, it became Bordenick's job to find a way to understand them and help them learn, she said.

Bordenick developed a six-week after-school program at the Maiden Choice School, on Shelbourne Avenue, to teach the children a vocabulary that reflected themes in American culture such as family, school, clothing and food.

She invited a representative from the International Rescue Committee, the nonprofit organization that helped relocate the families, to speak to her staff about the Burmese culture and what the lives of these children had been like.

The United States has sanctions against Burma because of that country's perceived human rights violations.

In fiscal 2009, the State Department expects to admit 18,000 ethnic minority refugees from Burma, including 10,000 from the camps along the Thai border.

In developing the program for the school's 14 new students, who ranged from kindergarten to fifth grade, Bordenick said the largest issue was transportation.

To transfer the students onto a bus route that would drop them off at the Maiden Choice School, where she had obtained space for the program after talking with Maiden Choice Principal Nancy Briganti, Bordernick had to appeal to Baltimore County Public Schools transportation department.

Maiden Choice seemed ideal since it was close to the children's homes on Alan Drive.

Once that was taken care of, Bordenick began staffing the program.

She knew she could recruit the six Towson University undergraduate students who were already student teaching at Halethorpe because they needed to complete an "action learning" project, she said.

Kelly O'Connell, a Halethorpe teacher, needed experience leading programs similar to the one Bordenick was considering as she worked to earn a master's degree in education administration at Towson University.

Bordenick said she called on Susan Turcotte, who handles Halethorpe's program of English for Speakers of Other Languages, as well as others at the school.

With transportation and staffing resolved, Bordenick sent a letter home with the children asking for their parents' blessings, and the program was born.

On April 21, Bordenick smiled as, one by one, the students walked up to her in a classroom at the Maiden Choice School to accept their certificates for completing the program.

According to O'Connell, who teaches first and second grade at Halethorpe, many of the children grew during the program from shy and quiet students to gregarious and eager to learn pupils.

"I get to see firsthand the impact in the classroom, and it's incredible," O'Connell said. "And socially? Wow."

On the last day of the program, the children flashed big smiles each time they correctly identified objects by name, or completed entire sentences.

Pau Muan, a lively second-grader, who said he had lived in India for a short time after leaving Burma and before coming to the United States, shot his hand into the air when O'Connell asked the students what their favorite season is.

"Winter," he said. "Snow."

Muan Tawmging, the only fifth-grader of the group, beamed at Turcotte when she asked if he liked spending time with his friends.

"I have (a) lot, like 24 or 25," he said.

Joining the Burmese students was Khadidiatou Diallo, a fourth-grader from Senegal who had asked to be part of the program after seeing her Burmese peers get excited about it each Tuesday.

"I thought I could learn new words and new things," Khadidiatou said, smiling at her completion of a sentence.

"My favorite thing is (to) read and play."

On their last Tuesday, all the students had groaned when Bordenick reminded them that it was the last day of the program.

But they smiled and put their arms around each other as they received their certificates -- gestures that seemed to give Bordenick and her staff their own sense of accomplishment.

"I feel like they have found their voice," Bordenick said.

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