My MEL Experiences

· Student/Teacher Relationship: When I think about a teacher that I had that developed strong relationships with students my High School Sophomore English teacher comes to mind. Mr. Finch was a beginning teacher and he was always a big hit with the students. He assigned a lot of work and his class was hard to get a good grade in but he found a way to make it fun. He would assign projects where we would make a medieval torture devise, film a reenactment of Macbeth, and he designed an entire lesson plan around “Survivor.” While he was able to connect to students he also made sure that while you were one of his students that you were not “friends” and that he would not play favorites.
· Helping Students Succeed: The teacher that has pushed me the most and still does stay in touch with me and continues to push me is my High School Calculus teacher. I feel that he saw my abilities in math and instantly knew what I was capable of and if I tried to pass in something less than what he thought I could do, he wouldn’t accept it. Going into the AP exam for that class he told me that he expected me to get a 5 (the highest possible grade) on it. He knew that I had the knowledge that I needed and just came out and told me.
· Hands-On: The class that was the most hands-on for me was High School Chemistry. Everyday we would do a new experiment or activity in our small groups. We would be given an objective and the supplies needed with an overview on how to proceed but then we were left to ourselves for the most part.
· Learning Styles: High School Physics is a class that I feel was designed to apply to the majority of learning styles. Some of the class was spent doing experiments and that would interest physical and logical students. The small lectures and board work with reading to go along with it kept the visual and auditory students engaged while the dinosaurs used in many of the experiments appealed to the natural students. Every lesson plan involved parts that would get all students interested.
· Interest: The class that held the most novelty for me is my Honors Encounter with Western Canon class that I took at UMF. The class was really driven by the students and if we wanted to read a certain book that pertained to the subject we could read it and write an essay on it. The class always got to decide what we were going to do next and if we had questions the rest of the class would help us find the answers.
· Autonomy: The worst class I have ever taken in respect to having autonomy was High School Biology. When class started we had to be sitting down and then there would be a lecture for the rest of the class. I only remember doing two experiments and those were highly structured in such a way that everyone’s final product was almost the exact same except for the name on the front.
· Avoid Rewards: As enriching as my High School Physics was my teacher refused to avoid rewards. He had a part in his class where we would all go out into the “glass corner” and he would ask us questions dealing with anything. Anyone who could correctly answer a question would get a piece of candy (usually a Starburst). This was done everyday and I feel that my teacher used the time to make sure that we were all on the same page because while we were out there we would also discuss the experiment or lecture of the day.
· Connections: The class that seems to always connect to previous classes is math. Calculus I builds off from PreCalculus and is continued in Calculus II. Then the ideas of derivatives and integration are used in Physics to help define acceleration and velocity. These tie in to my life because I am a runner and while I run I find it easier to know my time when all I know is my position and speed just by using some basic calculus. These concepts also apply to my life because one day I will be teaching them to students.
· Context: One class that I took that I have never found a use for the information taught is the computer class I took in High School. Just about the only thing I learned in that class was were all the keys were; however, I had already been taught that in Middle School so going back over it in High School did not help me. I know that I am expected to use computers in real life but I feel that where I already had the knowledge that it was a waste of my time to be in the class relearning what I already knew.