My MEL Experiences

• Student/Teacher Relationship: I had a great relationship with my high school chemistry teacher Mr. Trotzky. While he was supposed to be teaching me chemistry (which he did), he ended up teaching me more about current affairs, history, Judaism, and sociology. I felt like I could ask him anything about anything. I still continue to be great friends with him.
• Helping Students Succeed: Just about every teacher I had in school had confidence in me and they told me, and other students that all the time. I never felt like the teachers were judging me and they always had high expectations for me and my peers.
• Hands On: My history teacher in high school was very hands on. She would give really great lectures and lessons followed by tons and tons of projects, in class activities, outside activities, creative projects and so much more. She gave me great ideas of things I would love to do with my future students because I learned so much from them.
• Autonomy: Most of my teachers encouraged me and my classmates to take control of the things that we were doing. We were given a lot of independence and we also were given choices on things such as either taking a test or doing a project. Sometimes we even got to pick what topics we wanted to learn about in a certain class. One teacher even made one student a day present "current events" to the class and at the end of the week we would have a test over those topics.
• Avoiding Rewards: A lot of the teachers in my school avoided giving rewards to students. This one teacher, however, there was one teacher that gave rewards to students for high preformance and they would do it in front of the class. This made the people getting the rewards uncomfortable and the kids not getting the rewards feel worthless and jealous.