My MEL Experiences

• Student/ Teacher Relationships: One of my favorite teachers was my freshman health teacher, Mr. Chandler. He always made classes fun and light, which is especially important when you are dealing with subjects like eating disorders. The most fun that we had would definitely be during our sex ed. unit, which was an awkward set of classes for many students. He cleared the air and let everyone know that his classroom was a safe place and no one needed to talk about anything they weren’t comfortable with, and that all students should treat classmates with respect in regards to comfort levels.
• Helping Students Succeed: My senior year, I had to take a month off because I had to have my gallbladder removed. It surprised me how quickly I fell behind. There were many teachers who did not give me a single deadline when I returned to school, which bothered me. One of my teachers, Mrs. Porter, my English teacher, handed me a novel that the class read in an entire month and told me to have it read in one week and have to take-home test handed in on her desk in a week. I voiced my concerns about not having enough time to complete that and the normal work-load in one week. She quickly told me that she had been watching me for my entire high school career and had nothing but faith in me and the fact that I could get it all done. In fact, I did get it all done. Apparently she was right.
• Hands On: I had one high school U.S. Foreign Affairs teacher named Ms. O’Brian. As far as most of the classes went, there was not anything that could be taught using hands on methods. When we began our unit on Japanese-American Relations following the bombing of Hiroshima, many students voiced the fact that Asia was a boring continent. I too felt this way, as I find European history much more fascinating. Ms. O’Brian had lived for an entire school year in Japan and promised that she could change our minds. At the beginning of one of the classes, she came in and told us to stand up. She started class by teaching us tai chi. It was really fun and we learned that Japan wasn’t as boring as we thought. For every class for the rest of the year, we started the class off with tai chi.
• Learning Styles: My sophomore Western Civ teacher Mrs. Brewer was an absolutely insane woman. She normally had no set pattern for her classes, and it seemed that she decided what she was going to teach as she was teaching it. She is probably one of the few teachers that taught to the multiple intelligences. She thoroughly enjoyed taking students outside to learn, mixing group and individual work, playing music from different time periods to compare and contrast, doing fun games to learn new material, and so much more. She retired my junior year and we were all sad to see her go, but it was good to know that we got what we heard had been the best teaching year of her life.
• Autonomy: My sophomore English teacher used to give us calendars every month that had 12 boxes. There were three rows of four, and each box containing a different project. We had to pick one project from each row. One project usually consisted of writing, and two more creative choices. It was quite refreshing to finally have tons of choices to further learning outside of the classroom. I enjoyed this especially because I was tired of the run of the mill poster projects. When students are given options, it makes them feel as they are directing their own education.