My MEL Experiences

• · Student/Teacher Relationship: I have always struggled in math. While in elementary and middle school, I was able to know enough to squeak by with B’s. However, when it came to high school I was faced with Algebra and that was not something I could fake. My teacher my freshman year was Mrs. Lynam, and she could tell after the first couple quizzes and tests that math was not my forte. She (against my will) had me come to her room on her free periods, and during lunchtime to help me with what I just wasn’t grasping. This was the first time that I had ever had someone take the extra time and teach me the material in a way that I got. It was a really great thing, because not only was she helping me with my math, she was also teaching my stubborn self that it’s okay to struggle.
• · Helping Students Succeed: English, writing, and history, have always been my strength in school. I always thought I was such a hotshot in middle school and high school when it came to writing, because I always received A’s on papers, when in reality I put very little effort into them. My junior year of high school I had, quite possibly, the toughest English teacher in the school. She knew from past teachers that I was a good writer, and that I always received perfect scores on writing assignments. However, after I got back my first paper I turned into her, I received a B-. This was something that had never happened to me before in English, and I didn’t know exactly how to take it. For the rest of the school year I worked my butt off to get an A out of that teacher. I talked about it to her recently, and she told me that just because I had been a good writer in the past didn’t mean I didn’t have room to grow to become an even better writer. Not only did she teach me how to craft eloquent sentences, she also forced me to use vocabulary like eloquent in papers.
• · Hands - On: When I was in middle school we had tech Ed. In my family I’m not the one who can take apart an engine and put it back together, or can build a spice rack for my aunt for Christmas. That is something my brother and sister do, I on the other hand, am the bookworm. However, in 8^th grade I really enjoyed going to tech. Ed., and doing the projects. I remember one of the projects’; we had to make a “paper” airplane. (Which was really just lightwood). But throughout the process of making the plane, we learned about aerodynamics and all of those things, that I could have easily read about in a book to learn, but it was way more fun to learn it by making an actual plane.
• · Interest: My interests in school were sports, and history. So essentially the two classes I didn’t dread the most going to every day were, gym and, history. I enjoyed every part of history, and was never bored with the material, unlike many of my friends. When it came project time, I would take my two loves of sports and history and combine the two as much as possible.
• · Connections: My senior year of high school I was in Advanced Math, and Physics. These two class periods were usually back –to- back. For all four years of my high school career I had been asking Mrs. Lynam what was the sense in learning all this algebra when it was never going to be used in real life. Then, came my senior year in physics with Mr. Marshall, I realized that all the algebra and geometry I was doing in advanced math could actually be applied in physics. I thought that it was really cool to finally see it applied to something. However, it didn’t make me want to go out and take a liking to math.