My MEL Experiences

Student/Teacher Relationship

• I remember a teacher from high school who was really strict about what he wanted out of class. We needed to make a well organized binder with everything hole-punched, labeled, and in order; everything had to look perfect; he was a pain in the butt. The work was hard, grueling even considering it was history, but he make everything fun because he was a fun guy. He gave us all nicknames, I'm sure mine had something to do with fish, and one of my friends whose last name was Queen, he would randomly start singing "Killer Queen" when he was taking attendance. He had an ongoing feud with the teacher next door, even though they were buddies, and they would sporadically run into each other's rooms and do one of those manly belly bumps, or whatever you call it. He was a cool guy.

Hands-On

• In 6th grade, our whole school did a unit on whales; I don't know why, maybe it was even a state wide pandemic. Either way, it was fun. Instead of writing a report of what we had learned about the whales, we were allowed to write a song. I can still remember mine. It goes to the tune of The Chicken Dance, but I'm not going to sing it for you.

Autonomy: Choices, Decision-Making, Planning, Designing, Creating

• In 6th grade reading class, we were split into groups of four to read and do projects on a specific book. The awesome part was that the teacher let us pick which book our group wanted to read out seven books. The even more awesome part was that the book our group chose was one that we needed to order, so our teacher actually ordered the books special for us to read them. We read The Cure, by Sonia Levitin. It's an amazing book. I will never forget it.

Avoid Rewards

• For our senior year, my class needed to complete a senior scrapbook. It needed to be at least 20 pages long and could include anything from our senior year with a maximum of 2 family pages. It was quite a bit of work, and it wasn't worth very much as far as points towards our grade, but at the end of the year we all had this amazing book filled with memories of our last year in high school.

Learning Styles: Multiple

• Our Junior English class went outside four or five times that semester. We would sit/lay under the huge tree in front of the gym and read whatever text book we were reading in class. The teacher would read out loud for anyone who wanted to listen, or we could go off by ourselves and read. I'm sure all those naturalists loved it. As for me, I'm allergic to the sun, but it was certainly a nice thought.