Positive Learning Experiences and Their Impact

When thinking about different learning experiences, there are many that come to mind over my last 12 years in school. Some of these experiences that come to mind were incredibly helpful to facilitating my learning, while others were not as helpful for my learning journey. One experience that sticks out to me was a debate we had in seventh grade. While in Social Studies we were learning about the importance of having meaningful and facilitatory conversations about different topics where perspectives were bound to be different. Our teacher came up with a simple and silly topic to debate: is a hotdog a sandwich. She divided us into two teams: one team to defend the claim, one to oppose. We were given talking points and aided through the conversation, with each student having the opportunity to share their own opinions and thoughts without being interrupted or dismissed.

I remember being nervous before the conversation started, but leaving the classroom after feeling confident in myself and the discussion I helped to create. This activity fit our age group very well. Middle school can be such a challenge when it comes to finding your own voice, especially within a group of your peers. By creating a safe environment to talk and challenge each other opinions respectfully, we students left feeling confident about our conversation. By giving us a topic that was fun and simple, our teacher also helped to calm our nerves surrounding further debates that were about more serious topics. This debate is still something I remember now as a college student aspiring to be a teacher and is something I would implement in a middle school classroom.