高三英语 阅读第一期个人情感与人际关系复习素材9.docVIP

高三英语复习阅读第一期（个人情感与人际关系）9 （ 九） 【导读】当现实与我们的观念发生冲突时，我们是一意孤行，还是想法改变自己？ In 1974, after filling out fifty applications, going through four interviews, and winning one offer, I look what I could get — a teaching job at what I considered a distant wild area: western New Jersey. My characteristic optimism was alive only when I reminded myself that I would be doing what I had wanted to do since I was fourteen 一 teaching English. School started, but I felt more and more as if I were in a foreign country. Was this rural area really New Jersey? My students a week off when hunting season began. I was told they were also frequently absent in late October to help their fathers make hay on the farms. I was a young woman from New York City, who thought that “Make hay while the sun shines” just meant to have a good time. But, still, I was teaching English. I worked hard, taking time off only to eat and sleep. And then there was my sixth-grade class 一 seventeen boys and five girls who were only six years younger than me. I had a problem long before I knew it. I was struggling in my work as a young idealistic teacher. I wanted to make literature come alive and promote a love of the written word. The students wanted to throw spitballs and whisper dirty words in the back of the room. In college I had been taught that a successful educator should ignore bad behavior. So I did, confident that, as the textbook had said, the bad behavior would disappear as I gave ray students positive attention. It sounds reasonable, but the text evidently ignored the fact that humans, particularly teenagers, rarely seem reasonable. By the time my boss, who was also my taskmaster known to be the strictest, most demanding, most quick to fire inexperienced teachers, came into the classroom to observe me, the students exhibited very little good behavior to praise. My boss sat in the back of the room. The boys in the class were making animal noises, hitting each other while the girls filed their nails or read mag