I will be participating in a service-learning project at Rock Island High School where I will be helping refugee students from other countries adapt to the English language and to American school life in the ELL program and also helping a class of special needs kids to learn basic fundamentals of life skills, and I hope for many things to come from this.  To start it off, one goal of mine is obviously to help the refugee students learn and adjust while at the same time creating bonds and friendships with them.  I hope I am able to help teach them, and hope to learn from them along them way too.  They will have much to teach me about their culture and hopefully will enhance my abilities of communication.  In the class of special needs students, my goal is to learn to communicate with people in the toughest of situations and learning to be patient with people, being that their mental capacity is subpar compared to average people.  In the future, these acquired skills of communication will help me in my desired field of physical therapy.  As a physical therapist, I will have to be able to communicate with people in one on one or small groups, so helping these students will enhance my ability to do so. 

               I am assuming that the site, Rock Island High School, will be a typical high school environment.  I know that there are certain teachers that are part of the ELL program, and I assume that the teachers will push the refugee students to learn as they would teach any other students to learn, but probably at a slower pace so that the students will not fall behind.  I think that the students themselves will have a greater desire to learn than typical American students since they are being given such a great opportunity away from the struggles that they previously faced in their lives.  I assume that students will be grateful for the help they receive from the ELL program and Rock Island High School.  With the special needs students, I know that the teachers will have to be more hands-on.  I am expecting that we will probably do activities in that class on more of an elementary school level and that we will be more friends to these students than teachers.  Also I assume that the students will probably lack in basic communication skills, so more nonverbal communication will be part of this experience.  From these two diverse learning environments at Rock Island I expect to build great friendships through communication.

              In the past I have had interests in the hardships of countries in Africa that I have learned about from school programs or videos.  From seeing the horrible conditions and circumstances that some people face in Africa, such as civil wars and child soldiers, I had sympathy for these people.  I donated money to give aid to these oppressed people, but other than that there was not anything that I could do to help.  The only prior knowledge I had about the refugee program was what was gained from the brief talk in communications class.  However, I believe that this program is a great opportunity for helping the refugees and believe that this is a way that I can help the victims of the monstrosities in Africa have a better quality of life.  From my past interest in the population I am serving I hope that I can better help them than just donating money and be a part of their lives.