My MEL experiences

• How context is used in real world
During my sophomore year in high school, we had to do a huge project in math. We had to measure the height of something two different ways without physically measuring it. The lesson we had been working on in class dealt with right angles and relating similar triangles so one could accomplish this task with mirrors and/or shadows. During classes students would question Mrs. Clark as to how we would ever use this information about similar triangles in the real world. We then had to finish the project and we realized it is a fairly accurate way to tell the height of a tall structure if there is no other way to measure it.
• Student/Teacher relationship
I have had many teachers that I loved having for classes. My favorite of them all was my French teacher, Miss Broomhall. I had her as a teacher my junior year and loved her then because she was so much fun. My senior year was when I realized what an excellent teacher she was. My basketball team went undefeated for a majority of the season until the last game. In that game we lost and the entire team was devastated. Miss Broomhall went out that night and bought little trinkets and then made up a poem to use the trinkets in a clever way. “You guys are all still stars,” was one of the clever lines and we all got a little glow in the dark star. However, she did not stop there. She wrote all twelve team members a note telling them how important they are and what they attribute to the team. Miss Broomhall did not have all of the team members in class but she did it for everyone because she understood that it was important to us all.
• Helping students succeed
My third grade year was the most difficult in middle school. I had a teacher that graded me so hard that I had to spend extra time on projects and papers to not fail them. Mrs. Thompson was the toughest teacher in the school and she didn’t take that title lightly. Every project had a list of criteria that had to be in it and if not it wasn’t getting a good grade. As a third grader I thought this was ridiculous. I was not ready for all this work. Mrs. Thompson thought differently. I struggled to get the grades I wanted; then I had to do a project on a body system. I had to write a report and draw a picture of the skeletal system. I went to class the day it was due and saw all my friends’ drawings and they were way better than mine, but none of my friends actually drew their systems; their parents had done it for them. I had spent hours drawing mine. When we received our grades, I got an A! All my hard work paid off because Mrs. Thompson knew I could do it and refused to change the grading system for a bunch of third graders.
• Autonomy-choices
I always loved to write so when my high school introduced a creative writing, I jumped at the opportunity to join. However, the teacher of the class was not a good choice. Miss Santoro was pleasant enough she just did not run a creative writing class so that I would enjoy it. When I thought of creative writing I thought I was going to get to choose what to write about and how I wanted to write it. This was not the case. Miss Santoro told us what to write about and what style to use to write it in. I hated that class and whenever someone asked for a recommendation I highly advised them not to take it because it was not a creative class.
• Learning styles-differentiated instruction
I do not think I have ever been a proponent for differentiated instruction. This is a direct result from the experience I had with it in my high school. This type of instruction in my school meant that the entire class was taught at a lower level and that the more “advanced” students were given busy work to pass the time. Differentiated instruction is not meant for that purpose. It is meant to give the students who may be bored with the current level of teaching some deeper work so that they are challenged. Instead I was simply given work that would take longer so that I would finish on time with everyone else. My assignments only varied with the page lengths of papers or the number of problems I had to finish in math. Nothing was more challenging or difficult.