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.