"— ____. I had to stay in hospital the whole night due to a car accident and missed it.
I was 17 years old. Along with a dozen other boys I had made a long trip to Iowa in order to see a college that I was thinking of 1 . Now I was there and I was feeling sad and 2 . I was missing my family and the Appalachian mountains of my home. I loved 3 in the forests there. I loved how the 4 turned a thousand shades of green in the spring and then became a sea of red. 5 . and orange in the fall. I loved the 6 of countless wild flowers that grew in our meadows(草地). These things were a 7 of me.
Here in Iowa everything was 8 . The grass looked burnt and brown. All that I could smell was a 9 of corn, mud, and pigs. I walked outside the dormitory of the college and sat on a 10 . I closed my eyes and 11 being back home again. When I opened my eyes, however, I saw something that 12 my soul. It was a beautiful sunset. Gold, red, purple and pink clouds all 13 together in a picture. It was so huge that it took my breath away. It made our mountain sunsets seem 14 by comparison. I 15 that I had been foolish and judgmental(武断的). This place had its own special beauty. This place too was a part of God's 16 .
Over the years to come 1 17 something else. Each of us has a special beauty 18 . Each of us has our own unique 19 and abilities. Each of us has a beautiful, powerful love that only we can share. And God wants us to share it. May your life always shine 20 .
Below is a web page from //www.parents.com/.
Kid of the Year Photo Contest
Enter your kid's photo today and win! We're giving away 52 weekly $250 prizes from Readers' Choice votes. PLUS our editor s will select one entry(参赛作品) to win our grand prize of S7,
000.
Official Contest Rules
No purchase necessary to enter or win. The Kid of the Year Photo Contest entry period begins at 12:00 a. m. March 23, 2023, and ends on January 21, 2024 (the "Entry Period"). Entries must be received by 9:00 p. m. on January 21, 2024 ("Entry Deadline"). Entries will not be acknowledged or returned.
SPONSOR: Meredith Corporation, 1716 Locust Street, Des Moines, Iowa.
ENTRY: There will be two methods of entry.
Share My Entry:
Visit //www. parents. com/photos/photo-contests-1/kid-of-the-year/ and click the button to enter. Then complete the registration form and follow the instructions to upload one album of up to six photos of your child aged three months to eight years. Photos must be taken by entrant(参赛者). non-professional, unpublished and may not have won any prize or award. Photos must be . jpeg or . bmp image formats and cannot exceed 3 MB.
Faccbook Entry:
Visit Facebook. com/ParentsMagazine and click the Kid of 2019 tab. Fill out the registration form and upload one album of up to six photos of your child aged three months to eight years. You may provide one description and one album title that will be applied to all photos. Photos must be taken by entrant, non-professional, unpublished and may not have won any prize or award. Photos must be jpeg or.bmp image formats and cannot exceed 3 MB.
This promotion is in no way sponsored, supported or run by, or associated with Faccbook. You are providing your information to Parents Magazine and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used to run the promotion and register for Parents. com .
Photos must not contain material that infringesthe rights of another, including but not limited to privacy. publicity or intellectual property rights, or that constitutes copyright violation. Photos must not contain brand names or trademarks.
LIMIT:
One entry per household, per cligible(有资格的) child, per week. One weekly prize per child. For entries of more than one cligible child in the household, the entry process must be completed separately for each child. No group entries.
Pooja Rai was a young architecture student in 2014 when she went with a friend to give food to a local orphanage. She was surprised at what she saw.
Kids were playing with anything they could get their hands on. One group was rolling around a broken metal pipe. Two boys were trying to play badminton, using old shoes as rackets. "Play shouldn't just be part of a rich kid's lifestyle. All kids have a right to enjoy their childhoods." Rai says.
Over the next few weeks, she talked with friends about collecting money for a playground. And that's when she thought of old tires. Around 100 million tires are thrown away in India every year. Could they reuse them as playground materials and help the environment, too?
That idea became a reality in 2015, using old tires—all cleaned, carefully looked over to make sure they are safe to use, and painted in bright colors. The following year, she created Anthill Creations, which has built 275 playgrounds across India —celebrating the power of play in public spaces. orphanages, and schools.
"Our work always begins with talks with kids about what they want from this space." says Rai. Sometimes it can take a few hours, or a few visits, until children are ready to open up. She also draws on her experience as an architect. "I found that spaces are powerful in shaping people's behavior." she says.
Most of the play spaces Rai designs feature large tire sculptures of cars, buildings, or animals, paired with more classic elements of swings and jungle gyms.
In one girl's school in Bengaluru, the children wanted their play space to be shaped into a boxing ring, with tires doubling up as punching bags. "Their teacher was unsure about it." Rai remembers. "But the girls said they didn't want people to see them as weak. They wanted to practice self-defense and grow stronger." In December 2019, this playground became a reality.
"One of the reasons I find this topic very interesting is because my mom was a smoker when I was younger." says Lindson-Hawley, who studies tobacco and health at the University of Oxford.
By studying about 700 adult smokers, she found out that her mom quit the right way—by stopping abruptly and completely.
In her study, participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One had to quit abruptly on a given day, going from about a pack a day to zero. The other cut down gradually over the course of two weeks. People in both groups used nicotine(尼古丁) patches before they quit, in addition to a second form of nicotine replacement, like gum or spray. They also had talk therapy with a nurse before and after quit day.
Six months out, more people who had quit abruptly had stuck with it—more than one-fifth of them, compared to about one-seventh in the other group. Although these numbers appear low, it is much higher than if people try without support.
And the quit rates were particularly convincing given that before the study started, most of the people had said they'd rather cut down gradually before quitting. "If you're training for a marathon. you wouldn't expect to turn up and just be able to run it. And I think people see that for smoking as well. They think, "Well, if I gradually reduce, it's like practice." "says Lindson-Hawley. But that wasn't the case. Instead of giving people practice, the gradual reduction likely gave them cravings(瘾) and withdrawal symptoms before they even reached quit day, which could be why fewer people in that group actually made it to that point. "Regardless of your stated preference, if you're ready to quit. quitting abruptly is more effective." says Dr. Gabriela Ferreira."When you can quote a specific number like a fifth of the patients were able to quit, that's convincing. It gives them the encouragement, I think, to really go for it."Ferreira says.
People rarely manage to quit the first time they try. But at least, she says, they can maximize the odds of success.
Online classes began to be popularized just a few decades ago. They are advertised as a way for adults to finish their education and students to learn the material at their own pace—it is far more suitable for people with busy schedules.
But after being enrolled in an online course last fall semester, I came to realize online classes were merely a means to fulfil course requirements.
First of all, students lack the desire to learn, and they simply complete their assignments to receive credit for a passing grade rather than genuinely engage with the course material.
As online courses tend to have more than 100 students, most of the assignments are short and simple. They are not designed for students to interact with the material in depth but designed to be graded casily to accommodate such a large number of students.
Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of taking an online class is the absence of face-to-face interaction between the teacher and their students. Live sessions are infrequent and are often scheduled during the middle of the day when students have to attend other classes or work. The office hours of the professor may also be during inconvenient times for many students as well. Most interaction with the professor has to be through email which is often impersonal. It is nearly impossible for students to build a relationship with their professor.
There is also little interaction amongst students. It can be harder for students to create study groups and form relationships with their peers.
Online classes also require either a computer or laptop and a reliable internet connection. Not all students have access to these types of resources, whether it is for financial or other reasons, and some students can be put at a disadvantage.
Offering online classes certainly helps students who would otherwise not be able to attend classroom sessions. However, they fail to provide a genuine education with an emphasis on convenience rather than critical thinking. We need restructured online classes in which students can have a learning experience that will actually provide quality education.
My clder brother Steve, in the absence of my father who died when I was six, gave me important lessons in values that helped me grow into an adult.
For instance, Steve taught me to face the results of my behavior. Once when I returned in tears from a Saturday baseball game, it was Steve who took the time to ask me what happened. When I explained that my baseball had scared through Mrs. Holt's basement window, breaking the glass with a crash, Steve encouraged me to confess(认罪) to her. After all, I should have been playing in the park down Fifth Street and not in the path between buildings. Although my knees knocked as I explained to Mrs. Holt, I offered to pay for the window from my pocket money if she would return my ball.
I also learned from Steve that personal property is a sacred(神圣的) thing. After I found a shiny silver pen in my fifth-grade classroom, I wanted to keep it, but Steve explained that it might be important to someone else in spite of the fact that it had little value. He reminded me of how much I'd hate to lose to someone else the small dog my father carved from a piece of cheap wood. I returned the pen to my teacher, Mrs. Davids, and still remembered the smell of her perfume as she patted me on my shoulder.
Yet of all the instructions Steve gave me, his respect for life is the most vivid in my mind. When I was twelve I killed an old brown sparrow in the yard with a BB gun. Excited with my accuracy. I screamed to Steve to come from the house to take a look. I shall never forget the way he stood for a long moment and stared at the bird on the ground. Then in a dead, quiet voice, he asked, "Did it hurt you first, Mark?"I didn't know what to answer. He continued with his eyes firm," The only time you should even think of hurting a living thing is when it hurts you first. And then you think a long. long time." I really felt terrible then, but that moment stands out as the most important lesson my brother taught me.
