My MEL experiences

• Student/Teacher relationships: I had a terrible relationship with one of my teachers for several years. I come from a very small community and Mr. Gilman always paid special attention to the students that he was family friends with. I was not one of those students. I always did my work and received good grades. Dispite this, I was always left with the feeling that I, along with several others, was not quite as important to him as the other children in the class.
• Helping Students Succeed: My Pre-Calculus teacher would always let us work in groups on just about everything. He would have a certain amount of lecture/class time and then we would break up and collaborate with the rest of the assignment. I think that this really helped me learn the material because I was able to show someone else how it worked. I’ve always found that teaching someone something is the best way to gauge your own understanding of the subject. By doing this I was able to work out what I did and didn’t understand and then go from there.
• Interest: Ms. Cyr was my high school English teacher. She was really great at getting every one interested in the subject. When a group of students came to her and told her that we were interested in journalism she listened to us. Our school did not have a news paper that we could work on and there was no journalism course. Throughout the year she worked on a curriculum, and the next year she offered an English course based around journalism. We even started the first student newspaper at our school.
• Learning Styles: My science teacher my first year of high school was really fantastic with working with different learning styles. Some people understood the material (physics) straight from the book. Other students (like me) needed additional instruction. He would do reviews of the previous chapter and answer any questions by making drawings on the board or using other objects in the room to demonstrate.
• Hands on: Several teachers in my high school started a 30 minute activity block every other day. Each of the high school teachers picked an activity that they would instruct and every student was able to sign up for the one that they wanted to participate in. One example would be a cooking class. Each student in the cooking class brought in a recipe that they found and would like to try or that they enjoyed and would like to share. Another would be line dancing. Yes, line dancing; and to this day I can still do the “boot scoot and boogie”.