Strongest Learning Experience

The best way to learn new things is to make mistakes and learn from your mistakes and the best way to understand others is to put your legs in their shoes. Cliff

I learned this by looking at me and what I feel is right or wrong. I will continue to use this competency moving forward through out my career.

Going to college to receive a higher education could be one of the biggest obstacles of your life. If it is not the biggest obstacle than it’s certainly the most important. Frank Bruni’s opening question is more appealing to the transition from HighSchool to College. In HighSchool we were all taught to think a certain way when completing any task that dealt with learning. We were taught to remember and understand any work that was taught to students. Even when teachers gave test, they were only testing your ability to remember the material given. High school teachers’ number one objective was for students to remember what is said to pass the exam. However, in college these thinking skills are not acceptable. So approaching Frank Bruni’s opening question “‘What’s the most transformative educational experience you’ve had?’” I had to approach this question with higher thinking or else it would be a High School placement essay. I responded by of course using a little remembering and understanding because I have to understand the words in the question and remember the meaning of them. However, I mostly used theoretical ideas, some logic, understood the value of the question, and finally I combined all of my approaches to see how it would positively increase my diversity in college knowledge.

Topic: Refugees face an incredibly rough and hard life. Not only are they attempting to leave a country that is incredibly dangerous and could get them killed at any time, but even if they survive the journey there is a strong possibility that they will not be allowed into the US.

For the community engagement part of my project, I had reached out to the Des Moines Latino Center where I met Joe Gonzalez. Joe works with many Latinos and does a lot of community outreach to help people and help them get their stories shared with the right people. Joe is also a former Lieutenant for the Des Moines Police Department. After meeting Joe, I can say that he is a great person and just wants to help others out in any way possible. He directed me to a family that he has been working with who has recently moved here from Mexico and has a story to share. This family consist of a young man at the age of 22 named Paul and his three sisters who are 13, 16, and 17 years old. I conducted an interview with Paul, his sisters, and Joe. We

Refugees and immigrants have a specific set of needs that differ from other families. Oftentimes they suffer from a lack of resources and do not fully understand the culture that they live in. I would like to work with this population because I have experience in helping refugee/immigrant families succeed in the United States, while helping them to retain their own culture and identity. Though I have some experience working with this population, I would like to learn more about the depth of their needs and the ways that social work as a profession is seeking to fulfill that need.

Goal: To improve the lives of refugees, asylees, parolees, and survivors of trafficking by helping them to acquire the cross-cultural information, skills, and social support network needed to gain stability in society and supporting them as they achieve educational and economic goals.

Surprising in one so young, a large focus of Allie’s life is on her responsibilities – to her job, but also a personal responsibility to “her families” – the refugees she chooses to help. Not many people would choose to dedicate as many years of their lives to advocacy as Allie, let alone those of their twenties.

First of all, I would like to appreciate you for all the help you have been offering to refugees here in Charlotte. Being one of your clients help me notice that all you say and do is dominated on work and income, but I think you should try to encouraging the young ones to attend school to have a better future which they came for. I would be good if you would start practicing it. It is not something difficult or time consuming, all you have to do is tell them the importance of education and letting them know that they can’t live their whole life working under a minimum wage.

While on a school trip, I saw a small camp for refugees from Syria. It was absolutely heart wrenching. They lived in a shanty town and their clothing was old or secondhand from donations.While it was a brief encounter, the implications it had on me were enormous. My whole life had been full of privilege and low in strife. I always had clean clothing, food to eat, and a place to sleep. Right before I was at the camp, I was worried about whether or not I had time to stop to get coffee before I caught my connecting train. Seeing children half my age sick with debilitating diseases, and the overall standard of living, struck me in a way I didn’t, or couldn’t, understand if I didn’t see it in person. It opened my eyes to how grateful I am to live in America; and how lucky I am that my mom immigrated from the Phillipines, in the hopes that she would have a better

There are many things that I have learned, and many are worth mentioning. One in particular is when I was learning how to ride my horse. In order to do this you need to have dedication, balance, and you have to respect the animals. If you don't have these things you won't have a good connection to your horse, because they can feel your body language and smell your fear, pain, or if your happy. You're moods are transmitted to them if your nervous then they are also nervous and you dont want that. I am going to tell you of the time that i've been riding for a few years now, this was when I was around 8 years old (narration, flashback).

From 1991 over one-sixth of Bhutan’s people flee their country and take a shelter in Nepal, India and other countries around the world. The large populations of Bhutanese refugee are called lhotshamps, an ethnic group, who were forced to leave their country in the early 1990s. Among 105,000 Bhutanese I’m one of them. I was born in a hut made of bamboo, food rations, and dirt roads. We are hostile, unsettled, unsure of who we are and what future held for us. I often think can we ever able to get rid out of the tag called “refugee” would my life ever changed, while ongoing tussled between mind and outside world finally in 2008 United States open a door for us to settled in the United States a “promised land” with full of struggle in 2009 we came here at Grand Forks. As I was growing up in the refugee camp I have seen a countless number of violence, crimes, injuries, and rebuff that words can’t be described. Most importantly death of people from a disease that can be a cure if, we have enough facilities such as, advanced medical training and hospitals. Although during my early childhood I have seen so much of maltreatment and practices, I always thought of having a career in health-related profession because I wanted to invest and improve the lives of individuals so that their children don't have to orphans, forced to work when their parent died, nor they have to beg for food. When I was 10 years old, my friend and I were trying to climb up the mango tree and I step in

Now across the other side of our globe in Middle East Syrian refugees have fled their country due to continuous attacks on them. Among those escaping the conflict, the majority have sought refuge in neighboring countries or within Syria itself. Some countries are Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. These refugees have been able to adapt to their new community (country) faster since their identity is similar to the people living in the country. But what raised awareness to all the refugee crisis is when people found a lifeless 3-year-old boy lying face down on a beach in Europe. Ever since this event people all over the world have been more aware of the identity of Syrian refugees. People have noticed that Syrian refugees are the citizen like the rest of us, but they have not been treated like it, instead, they have been called as `terrorists`, and elsewhere ‘a burden on economy’. All over the world citizens from different countries including Canada have been donating food, clothes, and other necessities. As a community, we can respect and stand up for other identities and together we can create an enabling environment for them in the

Since I was a young girl, learning was something necessary to do in order to mature into my own self. It's something us as humans do to evolve from our younger selves. From learning to talk, walk ,and read we learn many things throughout our lifetime to be the person we are today. Learning is the key to life. Learning makes us progress. Riding a bicycle was a learning experience that I might never forget it.

Participations in small in-class groups which purpose was to accomplish a task assigned to us by our Professor, were the most powerful learning experiences for me. In developing common focus, as stated in Gitterman and Germain (2008), members need to establish group rules and also remember to “build on one another’s contributions, identify and focus on salient collective themes, invite expression of differences” (p. 174), as well as welcome opinions which are contradictory or different from the majority.