My MEL Experiences

• Environment: Student/Teacher Relationship- About 95% of teachers I have had brought a positive attitude to class. However, for a specific example to part of this, Dr. Melcher brings not only a positive attitude but an amazing sense of humor that makes his class fun and a joy to be in. His class may not have been a strong point of mine but his teaching style gave me the motivation to try in his class.
• Motivation: Interest- In 8th grade I had a teacher (who shall remain nameless) who was not at all interested in the other students' but just gave us the information we were to learn and did so in some of the most boring ways possible. Students had no input or bearing whatsoever on what or how we were taught in that class.
• Motivation: Avoid Rewards- Here I am assuming he means do not reward your student for every little thing done right. I had a teacher who only gave rewards for doing something really well. Rewards were only given out if you won a competition (based on learning the material given in class) or if you were the student of the month. This way, most students were motivated to do well in order to get the reward that was seldom given out.
• Meaning: Connections- My AP U.S. History teacher would often connect things in U.S. history to things we were familiar with, sometimes basing a chunk of class on it. An example is the Wizard of Oz and how it is a political commentary. As most of my classmates were at least familiar with the story if they had not read or seen it on video, all the ideas from the book were easy for the class to understand and we gained a lot from learning about it.
• Experience: Hands-On OR Meaning: Context- As I feel my experience could go under either component, I decided to list both. In high school I took a class called World History: Ethics, which was a world religion class. We learned about many of the major religions in history. To tie this class up, an option for a final project was to create a religion making sure that you incorporated key components from other religions (like having a festival day or a sacred text). Doing this let us understand the differences between religions and how to make a religion based on our own belief system.