My MEL Experiences

• Hands-On: My freshmen year in high school, my Algebra I teacher, Mr. Moody made the coordinate plane on the floor in our classroom. He gave us an ordered pair, one at a time, and we had to find out place on the plane. We also learned where the four quadrants were located. This was fun because we were able to get up and move around, but also learn about math in a new, interesting way.

• Learning Styles: My geography teacher taught us by lecturing and using PowerPoint on a Smartboard. It was much easier for me to learn because not only was she telling us about it, but we could look at the SmartBoard for more information. I discovered that this is best way I learn and I really enjoyed the class.

• Student/Teacher Relationship: My 7th grade math teacher was also my homeroom teacher, so I would see her every morning for twenty minutes or so, and one day I asked her a quick question about math. From then on we could have a couple minutes in the morning to talk about math, a new concept, or even just how life was going. I really liked that class because I felt like Mrs. Wells had a interest in me and my life, I wasn’t just a number and I did really well in that class.

• Helping Students Succeed: My band teacher was also a part time theatre teacher and at least once a week our band class would be a study hall because he would be working on the scenery for a play, or he would have a meeting, etc. We only played about twice a week and it would take at least fifteen minutes before he started class. This poor example of a band teacher really showed when we had concerts because the Middle School band always sounded so much better than the High School’s. He didn’t expect much from us, so we never gave it to him.
  
• Context: My geography teacher also had us do a current event every Friday that had to do with geography. We did things about the weather or the cultures of different people. We had to find an article and summarize it. As students, we hated doing it (and I’m sure she didn’t look forward to reading all of them). But when I look back on it, it really kept us informed about what was going on in the world. We also were given the option of sharing our topic if we chose to, so we could learn the topics of fellow students. And by doing these current events, the teacher could tie in certain facts that we learned, but they struck closer to home since we already knew a little to begin with.