My friendship with the students in a primary school in Uganda started on a shaky ground. The 1 of not being understood was hidden within, for they spoke a language different from that of mine and mine too fell on deaf ears.
I greeted them with a wide smile, and when I spoke further, they replied with ice cold 2 . A reminder echoed in my mind: you must live through it to get to them. So I gave it another try. I spoke 3 English with hand gestures and a bit of dancing. If all failed, the smile would 4 . Soon we picked up and then the 5 of the learners came into play. At the mention of a name, trembles and face covering were the response I got. I decided to 6 a desk with a team each day during group work to get closer. After school, I accompanied them home.
7 , we became friends. They were even aware of my favorite fruit, avocado (牛油果). If I didn't get one on my desk, it would 8 me wherever I was. My slippers were worn out. One night I left them out as no one could steal a pair of slippers in that state. The next morning, I was ready to drag my slippers on as usual and I was surprised they had been 9 . Wow!
The little things we do for each other bring us great joy and warmth. We don't have a proper spoken language, but we are fluent in the language of 10 .
The British must have really high standards. I was part of a student exchange programme between a university in England and my university in China. I had spent days (prepare) for my first English paper. I knew I did a good job and was looking forward getting a positive comment. When I got the paper back, I found that my teacher (write) the comment "Not bad!" Not bad? But there weren't any (mistake) in my paper.
The college entrance examination is just around the corner. Homework and tests will keep many of you up late at night, and you may plan to make up for your lost sleep during the weekends. is it useful? A study published in the journal Current Biology completely has changed people used to think. It shows that the habit of sleeping in on weekends doesn't fix the damage done by a lack of sleep during the week. Even (bad), it may damage your health.
The International Day of Families, which (name) by the United Nations in 1993, is held on May 15th every year. The day celebrates the (important) of families. It aims (develop) people's understanding of issues that are related to families. With a different theme each year, the day is observed with a wide range of events that are organized at local, national and international levels.
Our teen poetry workshops at Poets House are opportunities for writers in high school to create and explore poetry in one of the largest poetry libraries in the country. Young poets are given a chance to dig into the art and craft of poetry in a fun, creative and inspiring environment.
Online Video Workshops
Join Dave Johnson Workshop to write daily new poems in only 10 minutes. Click the banner for two series of video poetry workshops where poet, playwright and educator Dave Johnson chooses a poet each day, and takes us through a close reading of their work. He gives us an instruction based on their work, then a short biography and reads an additional poem. These workshops are fun and surprising, for teens through adults, free.
The Thompson Foundation Initiative
The highlight of our teen poetry workshop program is the Thompson Foundation Initiative, through which noted poets visit high school classrooms followed by free follow-up class visits to Poets House. Recent teachers have included Dave Johnson, Jive Poetic, and Maphogany Browne. This initiative is meant to increase access to poetic education for underserved schools and students by combining hands-on instruction from established poets with on-site visits to our extensive library. Students engage with poetry through reading, writing, and art projects that integrate the visual and linguistic.
If you are a teacher interested in this program, please reach out to Reggie Harris to arrange sessions for your class. Free class trips for all age levels are also available outside of this program.
Intensive Workshops for Teens
Advanced, individualized study is available periodically for students who want to continue writing poetry, through either our day-long or week-long intensive workshops.
One-day workshops: Participation is free. All interested teens are encouraged to sign up.
Week-long workshops: Participants are determined through an application process and an external judge; all interested high school students are encouraged to apply. Financial aid is available.
Liu Jichen, founder and CEO of Clear Plate, designed a mini-program that recognizes empty plates and rewards users with points. These points can be exchanged for gifts like books and cellphones, or better yet, they can be used to purchase charity meals donated to poor children in rural areas of China.
In 2016, Liu, a then student of Tsinghua University, noticed a popular campaign called "Leftover Party", where people brought their leftovers to eat together, intending to raise awareness of food waste. Liu and his classmates organized one such event, which was attended by hundreds of people. The success encouraged him to spread the concept of reducing food waste to a wider audience.
The idea of a mini-program struck him at a dinner in 2017 when Liu dined at a restaurant, which rewarded diners who finished off their food. Liu found that the restaurant would give these diners a card every time and offer them small gifts when they collected a certain number of cards. "Everyone who values food can enjoy a sense of gain at a lower cost," Liu said, noting that such an idea could be realized online.
He formed a team to work on the project. Yet it was quite a challenge for the AI system to identify the uploaded photos. Liu and his team, assisted by more than 1,000 others, spent half a year collecting over 100,000 samples across the country to train the digital brain.
"There were so many uncertainties in research and development. For our team members, the biggest challenge was whether we were confident enough to complete it," Liu said. They not only achieved their goal, but now, the mini-program has more than five million registered users. "We hope to inspire everyone to take action against food waste and to contribute Chinese wisdom and solutions to global food security challenges," he added.
My university has now topped the U.S. News & World Report rankings for 11 years running. Given Princeton's success, you might think I would be a fan of the list. Not so. Don't get me wrong. I am proud of Princeton's teaching, research and commitment to service. I like seeing our quality recognized. Rankings, however, are a misleading way to assess universities. Different schools have distinct strengths, structures and missions. The idea of picking one as "best", as though educational programs competed like athletic teams, is strange.
However, the U.S. News rankings attract great attention and a huge customer base. Applicants and their families rely on the rankings and feel pressure to get into highly regarded institutions. As a result, many schools make intense efforts to move up in the rankings. This competition produces damaging consequences. For example, some universities avoid doing difficult but valuable things—such as admitting talented lower-income students who can succeed at university if given appropriate support.
Still, students and families need comparative information to choose universities. If rankings mislead, what is the alternative? For generations, buyers have turned to Consumer Reports for advice about almost everything except university education. When Consumer Reports evaluates a product, it assesses multiple factors so that potential buyers can make their own choice wisely. Similarly, university applicants need information about some basic variables. Graduation rates are crucial. A university that does not graduate its students is like a car with a bad maintenance (维修) record. It costs money without getting you anywhere. What applicants need is not the average graduation rate, but the rate for students with backgrounds like their own. For example, some places successfully graduate their wealthy students but do less well for lower-income students. Applicants should also see some measure of post-graduation outcomes.
Here is a partial list of other factors that matter: cost of tuition (学费) and fees; high-quality teachers actively engaged in undergraduate instruction; and a learning culture composed of diverse students who study hard and educate one another. Judged by these criteria, many schools could be "Consumer Reports Best Buys". Applicants should be excited to get into any of them; they should pick the one they find most appealing; and they should not waste time worrying about which is "the best".
It would be great to have a Consumer Reports for universities. I hope that some national publication will have the courage to produce an annual, user-friendly Consumer Reports-style analysis of higher education institutions, even if it is not as attractive as a football-style set of rankings. In the meantime, those of us who understand the imperfection in the rankings must call them out—even when, indeed especially when, we finish at the top.
If there's one cliché (陈词滥调) that really annoys Danah Boyd, a specialist researcher who has made a career from studying the way teenagers use the web, it's that of the digital native. "Today the world has computer-mediated communications. Thus, in order to learn about their social world around them, teenagers are learning about those things too. And they're using that to work out the stuff that kids have always worked out: peer (同龄人) sociality, status, etc.," she says.
It's no surprise Boyd takes exception, really: as one of the first digital anthropologists to dig into the way teenagers use social networking sites, she gained insights into the social web by taking a closer look at what was going on.
Lately, her work has been about explaining new ways of interpreting the behavior we see online. She outlined some examples at a recent conference in San Francisco, including the case of a young man from one of the poorest districts of Los Angeles who was applying for a top American college. The applicant said he wanted to escape the influence of violence, but the admissions officer was shocked when he discovered that the boy's MySpace page was covered with precisely the violent language he claimed to hate. "Why was he lying about his motivations?" asked the university. "He wasn't," said Boyd. "In his world, showing the right images online was a key part of surviving daily life."
Understanding what's happening online is especially important, for today's teenagers have a vastly different approach to privacy from their parents. She says, "Adults think of the home as a very private space. That's often not the case for teenagers because they have little or no control over who has access to it, or under what conditions. As a result, the online world can feel more private because it feels like there's more control."
The concept of control is central to Boyd's work, and it applies to pointing out the true facts about teenage behavior. Boyd suggests control remains in the same places as it always did. "Technologists all go for the idea of ‘techno-utopia (乌托邦)', the web as great democratizer (民主化)," she says. "But we're not actually democratizing the whole system; we're just shifting the way in which we discriminate."
It's a call to arms that most academic researchers would tend to sidestep, but then Boyd admits to treading a fine line between academics and activists. "The questions I continue to want to ask are the things that are challenging to me: having to sit down and be forced to think about uncomfortable social stuff, and it's really hard to get my head around it, which means it's exactly what I should dive in and deal with," she says.
Once considered an optional lifestyle choice, recycling has become a commonplace activity in most areas. One type of recycling, called downcycling, involves re-purposing a material into a new product of lesser quality.
Downcycling is also known as downstream recycling. It is most common in terms of industrial materials. These products lose their value as they are recycled, which limits their capacity for new use. White writing paper, for example, is often downcycled into cardboard; once downcycled to this new form, it can no longer be used as white paper again. Another example of downcycling includes the use of plastic components.
Giving products a new life is considered a good way to reuse materials and avoid waste. Once downcycled to their full capacity, however, these materials are eventually so degraded that they cannot be reused further. Since downcycled products are considered of lower quality than their original form, they cannot be used in remaking their original product.
Plastic, glass, and aluminium products coded with the number one may be remade into something of equal or greater value. This type of recycling is known as upcycling, and represents the forward compatibility of recycled components. Materials available for downcycling, such as water, juice, and milk bottles, are coded with the number two.
Items available for downcycling often require additional chemicals, energy, and other treatments in order to transform them into something usable. Durable plastic products in particular require much additional treatment. Trash bins, tables, and chairs are also considered materials with a high energy cost to recycle.
When a product reaches a code seven, it is considered no longer recyclable. Since these products can no longer be made into new ones, they will either have to be reused or discarded, typically in a landfill.
A. It can include varying grades of plastic, paper products, and other materials.
B. Their recycled form is typically both weaker and cheaper than their original one.
C. They may not be used to contain food-grade items again upon being downcycled.
D. Products are provided with codes to determine their grades and whether or not they may be recycled.
E. This usually occurs when a substance is blended with other substances, such as different types of plastic with various recycling codes.
In 1983, Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard, published Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In the book, he presented one type of intelligence that everyone must develop if they want to be successful. That is emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and regulate your own emotions. It means having a deep understanding of yourself, knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, and handling reactions and emotions wisely. Emotional intelligence is critical for success in almost any field and it is especially important for high-stress environments, for example, when times are tough and when a person wants to quit or is fearful.
We all know highly emotional people. Rather than react wisely, they tend to let their emotions run their lives, often saying or doing something they may later regret. I've seen many people do this on social media, getting in arguments with loved ones over trivial stuff because they have different opinions. This inability to master the self leads to many struggles and heartaches for people.
Emotional intelligence does not mean being void (没有) of emotions. It means you know it is okay to be angry, just not out-of-control angry. You know it's okay to feel hurt, but it is not okay to do something stupid in the name of revenge (报复). Many of us know people who are very intelligent, but allow their emotions to damage their lives.
Now, reflect on how you manage your emotions. Are you smart in the way you express what you're feeling, especially when the pressure is on?
It's important to keep your emotions under control, so when you get hurt, you should neither get angry nor do stupid things for revenge.
