My MEL Experience

• Student/ Teacher Relationships: (Positive) My High School History teacher Mr Thyng was one of my favorite teachers. He respected everyone of his students. Even the students that often skipped class would not skip his class. He gave everyone a chance no matter how well they were doing, he did not judge. He did a trivia extra credit game for those that wanted to get extra points in the class. (Negative) I had an English teacher that played favorites. I happened to be on the field hockey team and she was the coach. However others that did not have that luxury. For those students she did not help them out as much as she should have especially the ones that were really struggling. Also if you were doing good in her class then she would be nice to you but if you were then she would not give you the time of day
• Autonomy: (Positive) Mr. Shaw was a visual/ performing arts teacher in my high school. This job required creativity but it also consisted with our other classes. This class gave students the opportunity to become creative and use methods of expression that they would not have normally used before (ex: skits and movies). (Negative) I had a math teacher in Junior High that had the same homework and class format the whole school year. It was very predictable and I personally did not learn much from him. It was not challenging.
• Hands- On:(Positive) My Junior High History teacher had us do two major projects. One was a research paper/ presentation to our teachers and parents and the other was a reenactment of the Battle of Bull Run during the Civil War. The reenactment involved our whole class (100 students) playing both the North and South. It was fun and creative and on project graduation we watched the tape from it. (Negative) One of my Junior High Science teachers literally stunk at teaching. He read from the book had us do some homework. We did not do any actual lab work or experimenting or hands-on learning. I thoughts what you were suppose to do as a science teacher.
• Connections:(Positive) My high school algebra teacher was very good at connecting the material that we were working with to real life. Most of our homework contained real life situations. It was helpful that she did it because there are still some algebra equations that I still use today. (Negative) My history teachers did not do a very good job at connecting the past to the present. However that is a difficult task to do with some history subjects. I think a good way of connecting things is for a student to look at how other students in history were effected by certain events.
• Learning Styles:(Positive) My senior English teacher allowed for almost every activity that we did in class the opportunity to choose how we would create it. we were given the choice of whether we wanted to do essays, a presentation, a poster, a children's book or whatever else you could come up with. This allowed for everyone to have their learning needs to be accommodated. (Negative) My high school history teacher (the same one from the very top of this blog) had no creativity in how he presented his material. It was straight read a piece and fill in the blanks or listen to him lecture and fill in the blanks. Even though all students liked Mr. Thyng a lot of students did not do good in his class. However he did allow extra credit activities that would hopefully help students that were not doing good.