My MEL Experiences

• Student/Teacher Relationship- One of the most open teachers I ever had was my high school chemistry teacher, Mrs. Cote. She was always willing to help me with anything I was dealing with. I didn’t just talk to her about Chemistry, but she took the time to help me with anything I might be struggling with. Having a teacher that you know really cares is really important. She was also able to laugh at herself, which helps the students to feel more comfortable. Knowing that she cared about my schooling as well as me as a person had a great impact on me.
• Interest- I have never been very interested in history, but one of my teachers allowed us to read a book on anything that went along with history from the time period we were studying. The book I read was Flags of our Fathers and I had read a book by the same author earlier, so I figured I would like this book. I was not disappointed, and I gained the most from reading about what was going on during the time period. Allowing me to read something that interested me instead of assigning a particular book made my learning experience that much more rewarding.
• Autonomy- For a class I took in aquaculture, I got to design and follow through with an experiment for the entire semester. I chose to create an apparatus that increased the density of algae, which could in turn be used to extract hydrocarbons for fuel. It was one of the most exciting and interesting projects I ever got to do. The teacher was there for support and help when I got stuck on various aspects of the set up and evaluation of the experiment, but overall I was able to do it myself. Being responsible for something that had meaning, and that I got to create was very rewarding.
• Connections- In a finance class I took, we were able to look up information on buying a home. This project was useful, because I hope that someday I will be buying a home and now I know what to expect. Being able to do the research on my own and seeing how all the critical pieces fit together helped me to see its relationship to my own life in the future. If the teacher had just told us about buying homes and not allowed us to research it on our own in a way that was relevant to us than we may not have learned as much.
• Context- When taking Biology, my teacher explained about some real research being done on how plants produce energy. She related it to how we might develop useful energy in the future. Seeing how what we were learning was currently being studied by experts, and why it was useful in the real world, made the subject more relevant. I would not normally care so much about plants producing energy, but hearing about its importance to researchers helped me to appreciate the subject.