Focus the Nation

To learn about global warming I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. It was very interesting and I learned a lot. Three things that I learned are:

• There is a possibility that a major ice sheet in Antarctica could collapse. This could raise global sea levels by 20 feet, which would cause flooding.
• Since 1880, the hottest ten years ever measured have all occured in the past 14 years.

• The Arctic Ocean is losing ice at a fast pace. This negatively effects polar bears.

Since I am going to be a health teacher, I could probably plan a whole unit on global warming, the environment, and ways to be more "green". I could teach my students ways to save energy such as using energy efficient light bulbs, turning off computers when not in use, and taking shorter showers. I could also give them tips such as car-pooling, avoiding bottled water to reduce the use of plastic that will end up in a landfill, and supporting local farmers, etc. I could teach them why global warming is happening and what exactly is happening to the environment. I like how An Inconvenient Truth sort of has a shock factor and it really made me want to try to make a difference. I would definitely want to share that film with my students. For a project, I would have my students create iMovies or use ComicLife to make an interesting project about global warming. I would then have a presentation that the community would be invited to, and all the students could share their work and discuss why making changes to improve our environment are necessary. I would also have the students send letters to Congress about the importance of taking action on global warming. This would make the students feel like they are making a difference.

My MEL experiences

Hands On: My favorite class in high school was Video Production. In this class we learned how to use the program iMovie, and got assigned many different projects to complete. Some of the projects that my partner and I did were a 30-second commercial, a music video, a story we created about the epic poem Beowulf, and a movie that captured our school's Homecoming week. This class was very hands on, which is why I loved it so much. We worked for a week on our first project (the 30-second commercial). We decided to endorse a dance video. We wrote a script, created a dance routine, chose friends to act in the video, selected music, and edited the video entirely on our own. When our videos were finished, we sat together as a class and watched all of the commercials together. The fact that this class was extremely time consuming and difficult did not take away from how much we got out of this class. Movie making is an incredible hands on experience that one will never understand until they have experienced it.

Student/Teacher Relationships: Interacting positively with students is one of a teacher's most important jobs. If a teacher treats a student with disrespect, that student will not be eager to listen to what the teacher has to say. Math was my favorite subject in high school until my senior year when I took Calculus. My teacher ruined it for me completely. I missed a few classes because of National Honor Society duties. When I approached her for help to make up my work, she was completely unwilling to stay after school and was angry with me that I missed classes. After repeatedly trying to find a time to meet with her, I gave up and tried to learn the work I missed on my own. As the class progressed, the teacher seemed to have an obvious disliking toward me that my friends would joke about. I got so angry that I dropped the class in the middle of the quarter even though I was doing well. From that point on, I have a strong feeling of dislike toward math, because I associate it with that teacher. This shows how a negative student/teacher relationship can totally ruin class for a student. Luckily I was in high school and had the option of dropping the class, but most students are not as fortunate and could be stuck with a teacher that they have a bad relationship with for a whole school year.

Learning Styles: I definitely enjoyed the hands on learning style the most. I liked working individually on big projects the best. In my geometry class, my teacher created many projects for us to do that included angles, midpoints, lines, and other measurements that involved geometry. As part of our final we had to create a mobile that involved a certain theme, a variety of shapes, and each piece had to be balanced perfectly. I chose the Olympics as my theme and shaped my pieces as different equipment used in the Olympics. I wrote facts about the Olympics on each piece. This really shows that my teacher was thinking of different styles of learning and giving students the freedom to incorporate something they enjoyed with geometry. I will never forget all of the fun things we did in that class.

Helping Students Succeed: In eighth grade I was in Algebra 1 class. I found it very difficult and needed help almost every day. Many other students were in the same situation that I was, so our teacher made a study group after school and stayed as long as we had questions and needed help. We all appreciated this very much, and the group helped me a lot. That year was the first time that I started to really love math. This shows how much a teacher can help a student if they put in the effort. I went from not understanding Algebra, to math being my favorite subject.

Interest: All throughout school I disliked science. Junior year of high school I took Chemistry, which I was really dreading. My teacher, Mr. Morrow, made it much more desirable by having us do exciting experiments, and making certain that we all understood the material before he started teaching something new. He was aware that many of us were not interested in learning Chemistry, and his goal during the school year was to change our minds about the subject. I really appreciated teachers like Mr. Morrow. Even though I did not have a great interest in his subject, I looked forward to his class because he tried his hardest to make it fun.

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I and Type II technology are fairly similar, yet differ in many ways. Type I technology is what we think of as old teaching. It is when technology is used in the classroom, but the students are not involved in it. Type II technology is when technology is used in the classroom and it engages the students. In other words, Type I is like sitting back and watching, while Type II is hands on.

Some examples of Type I technology are: a teacher using a PowerPoint presentation as a way to display notes to the class, a teacher showing a movie to a class, and using a projector screen to write notes and show diagrams. Examples of Type II technology are: students using computers to work on WebQuests, students making iMovies, students using blogs to view each other's work and comment about it.





Johnson, D. LaMont and Maddux, Cleborne D. Type II Applications of Technology in Education: Better Way of Teaching and Learning. The Haworth Press, Inc: 2005.

Learning Styles Inventory

My results from the Learning Styles Inventory are fairly different from my results in Dr. Grace's class. While the results on this test show that my styles are social and aural, the results from class revealed that I was a mixture of bodily/kinesthetic and visual/spatial.

I definitely think that I belong in the social category, but I do not agree with aural. I was really surprised that the physical style ended up being a lot lower than my results from Dr. Grace's class. I feel like bodily/kinesthetic is definitely my strength out of all these different styles.

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

Many of the high school students’ comments in Kathleen Cushman’s Fires in the Bathroom caused me to feel various emotions. While numerous stories caught my attention, Tiffany’s story of her teacher discriminating against a homosexual student in front of the class jumped out at me the most. She told about how a boy was putting on lip-gloss in class and the teacher made a comment about it. This resulted in the boy’s classmates laughing at him (Cushman, 30).

Tiffany’s story made me feel very angry. Teachers should not be biased toward any student. If they have an opinion on a student they need to keep it private and focus on treating all students the same. Teachers should not discriminate or make fun of students at all, let alone in front of an entire class.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

After just reading the first chapter in Fires in the Bathroom, I can already tell that I am going to learn a lot. The thing that stuck out to me the most was when Bosung talked about how students want teachers to teach them, and guidance counselors to guide them (Cushman, 5).

I agree with Bosung. Even though teachers may feel like they want to change all of their students' lives for the better, they are there to teach. If a student wants advice from their teacher, they will ask. Otherwise, it is their guidance counselor's job to counsel them. I think it is very important for teachers to make sure they do not cross any boundaries. If they do, they may lose respect from some of their students.