阿尔继续朗读着，叙述着他的梦魇，叙述他自己从不知道有一个男人对他来说是这么重要，但是这个男人又是那么地不真实。当他朗读着如此深情而真诚的话语时，我可以听出他的声音在颤抖，我看到他那有着两个酒窝的脸颊上淌下了一滴泪珠。我看了一下观众，杰西卡和其他几个静静倾听的同学也是泪眼朦胧。
我想，他们允许他这样做，允许他分享一些或许他从来没有与别人分享过的东西，而且他们没有歧视或取笑他，我哽咽了。
在结尾的时候，阿尔竭力朗读着最后一句话：“如果说我有一个愿望的话，那就是能见到我的爸爸，这样我就不会……”他的泪水已经决堤了，我们也是。“……这样我就不会每天晚上躺在床上想象他的样子了。”
在我没有作出任何暗示的情况下，全体同学起立为他鼓掌。当大家纷纷跑上前去拥抱他的时候，阿尔笑了。
这就是我之所以教书的原因。之所以教书，是因为我可以在那些面孔下面了解到一些故事，是因为我可以看着孩子们成长、欢笑、学习和友爱，更是因为那些像阿尔一样的学生。
记忆填空
1. I had one of those teacher moments, when I smiled and_____for him to read, while inside I said a silent prayer that the other students would not tease the new kid_____he read. The room fell silent, and Al_____ to read.
2. Al finished, struggling now to read his____ sentence.“If I had one____, it would be to meet my dad, so I wouldn’t... ”His____were rolling now, and so were ours,“... so I wouldn’t have to_____my eyes in bed every night just wondering what he looks like.”
佳句翻译
1. 所以，当他自愿要在“作家工作室”上朗读自己的作文时，我感到很惊讶。
译________________________________
2. 我看了一下观众，杰西卡和其他几个静静倾听的同学也是泪眼朦胧。
译________________________________
3. 在我没有作出任何暗示的情况下，全体同学起立为他鼓掌。
译________________________________
短语应用
1. ...and I am always amazed at the words that come from my students’hearts.
be amazed at：吃惊于……
造_______________________________
2. One such example of courage took place during author’s chair...
take place：发生；举行
造_______________________________
田间之旅
Field Trip
伊万?盖尔福德?布雷克 / Evan Guilfore-Blake
My first school was the storied one-room schoolhouse. An old whitewashed building with a red roof and a vane on the peak, it sat at the top of an unpaved hill surrounded by farmland (including a barn rife with livestock) in a then-unin- corporated area of Urbana, Ilinois. The school housed all 6 primary grades and, as I recall, there were about 35 of us, mostly very young, although we ranged in age,_of course, up to 12 or 13.
The year was 1953, and I was 6 years old, a first grader, and the son of a Ph. D. student at the University of Ilinois. My peers and the upper graders were farm kids or children of undergrads taking advantage of the GI Bill. Some were just too poor to live in the city, which would have qualified them for a city school. I suspect my parents dismissed the relevance of the first grade, since most of my education came at home, at their hands, anyway.
The sole teacher in that school was as classic as the building itself. Mrs. Knapp was a schoolmarm by profession and she’d been doing it, she said, all her life. By then, I'd guess, that meant 35 or 40 years on the job. She had to have been in her 60s: white hair in perfect array.
She handled our diverse intellects with perfect aplomb, guiding those of us who could read well through the pleasures of Stevenson’ s poetry and Mr. Popper and those who struggled with reading through the joys of Dick and Jane. If every grade was a different country, Mrs. Knapp was fluent in the 6 languages we spoke, always having appropriate conversation to offer on whatever subject—academic and not—that our curiosity was heir to. She knew, for example, more about baseball and its history than my father did and was always ready to argue the merits of Pee Wee Reese her favorite shortstop against Chico Carrasquel mine.
The one Mrs. Knapp incident that will always remain engraved in my memory didn’t happen at school, however. It happened on a deserted country road that divided corn-fields on the afternoon of the last day of that, my first full-fledged school year. To celebrate the beautiful weather, she’d taken us on a field trip, literally, through the bright yellow and green of corn and wheat stalks that were taller than I was (and than she was, too) but still 2 or 3 months shy of their harvest.
We wandered, as large groups of children are won’t to do, our eyes catching with fascination on every bug and bird and leaf, every one of which, unfailingly, Mrs. Knapp had explanations for. We trekked along utterly untrafficked gravel and dirt roads that had been bulldozed just wide enough for tractors or a single car to travel. There were no trees: The Ilinois prairie land was flat, and we could see only the blue of the horizon and an occasional farmhouse rooftop beyond the fields of grain. We ate our lunch sandwiches along a roadside, listening to the rustle of the wind through the gently waving crops, the cries of the crows, the chirrs of the crickets and beetles.
After lunch we walked more. Now, though, the trip had become repetitious—more fields, more crops, more birdcalls—and I, certainly among others, was becoming impatient. Then, it happened: There, in the absolute middle of nowhere straight out of what, some years later, I would think of as The Twilight Zone or a Stephen King novel,_on the side of another single-lane road hundreds of yards from anything that resembled civilization, stood an ice cream stand. Nothing fancy, just a wooden counter 6 or 8 feet wide, 5 feet high, 2 feet deep, with poles supporting a wood sheet that served as sun cover for the grizzled, but smiling, middle-aged man who stood behind it. The words“Ice Cream—10 Flavors” were painted prominently on the front.
