My MEL Experiences

• Student/Teacher Relationship (Environment): One of my high school experiences consisted of an English teacher who really disliked me. I am unsure still of what exactly I did to create her negative feelings towards me, but she really treated me differently from the rest of the class. When I would turn in work, especially papers or reports she would grade them differently than the rest of the class, giving me lower grades for my best work than my other 3 alternate English teachers had given for my best work. I am still unsure of why my grades were not as high as usual, I wonder if she disliked my writing style. I would ask other teachers for assistance on my work when she would refuse to explain her grading. No matter what the result of my grades in the class, or the help I received from the other teachers, I did not have a good experience in this particular teacher's class. She discouraged me from my own writing, making me feel it was inadequate when all of my previous teachers (and teachers after her) had praised me for my individual styles. The environment was not one that I benefited from or enjoyed, therefore discouraging my learning.
• Hands On (Experience): Another important learning experience for me was during my senior year I took two different classes with the same teacher that promoted learning from hands on and experimental work. One class was a cooking class and the other an interior decorating class. Both classes had a very structured curriculum, but were designed for the students to learn by doing rather than constantly studying books. That year I learned many different skills in both classes that I still use in everyday life and have yet to forget. This type of learning embedded the important ideas into my mind, therefore keeping the facts with me for this long. The hands on experience forced me to learn the patterns of the work rather than just the words and written directions. Physically experiencing the process helped me completely understand the subjects I was studying.
• Learning Styles (Experience): Varying the types of learning in classrooms not only keeps students engaged, but it creates a blanket for all the different learning types in the classroom. One of my best ways of learning is not only hands on, but it is anything in relation to the Spacial Intelligence. This type of intelligence gives me a decent ability to be creative, but productive and interpret things in more artsy ways. Throughout high school I would excel in any classes that gave me a chance to branch out and do a project with extra detail on the presentation, the designing parts of projects, or even direct relation to art, such as photography. Getting a chance to go outside and visualize pictures with the elements of rule of thirds or leading lines gave me the opportunity to memorize everything I needed to memorize in the class, but also see and experience the concept while designing a beautiful picture. It was another way of learning that incorporated different intelligences and promoted my memory of the written work.
• Autonomy (Motivation): The concepts of planning, designing, and creating have become more and more important to me as I have gone through school. In high school is where I learned the basis of these important tools. Receiving a syllabus in any class helps achieve a general sense of what to expect and how to plan ahead for the class. I find this tool always incredibly helpful in the learning process because it gives students the chance to focus on certain tasks and in a certain order. I also had one teacher that would have a board full of upcoming assignments and events that he would remind us to check each class. This gave us a chance to stay on top of our assignments with a little push from the teacher, but the feeling that we were succeeding independently also.
• Context (Meaning): Also in my senior year I took this one class that was called "Future Perspectives". I remember this class as one of the most valuable classes I took all through high school. As a segway into life after high school this class taught the students about budgeting, student loans, job interviewing, professional resume and letter writing, and any other general knowledge about surviving with or without a college education. Every single class I learned something that was meaningful and applied to my life. After that class I was confident that the things in life that looked so difficult and complicated that I was bound to come upon, were not so bad and I was old enough and mature enough to handle them. This teacher was understanding, helpful, caring, and compassionate. She taught us how to be adults in a way and it was definitely a class I would recommend to any high school student because it was truly motivating and an excellent preparation for the real world.