Dear John Owen,

My name is George Smith, an assistant professor at Riverside Teacher’s College. I teach a seminar course for fifteen student teachers. At this point in their studies, my students are looking for guidance on their future teaching career. Your authority in this field, as the principal at Eastville School, will help them as they prepare a teaching portfolio. I would like to invite you to speak to my students on Thursday, March 22 from 5 to 7 p.m. Your expertise will help them focus on what to include in their teacher portfolio and what experiences and skills separate good candidates from great ones. I would be honored if you would accept this invitation.

Sincerely,
George Smith

We had decided to get away from the bombs, but the buses didn’t move. We waited and waited, but they didn’t go anywhere. It became so dark while we were sitting on the bus that we began to shiver at the sense of dread. I felt like a bomb was going to fall on us or that soldiers were going to come in. All of a sudden, I heard the loud sound of engines, and the buses started moving. I thought it was a dream. We drove for about thirty minutes, and then out the window I could see a big crowd of people who were waiting for us. Mommy said they were people who were going to help us. I almost couldn’t even believe it―we were safe.

Often the difference between feeling fulfilled at work and feeling empty, lost, annoyed, and burned out is all about whether or not you’re learning anything. This is another reason to listen. It’s amazing how much more you learn when you pause, quiet your mind, and listen to what others say. This is true for peers to your left and right as well as the very teams you lead. Sometimes it’s hard to listen to your boss or an executive, especially if you don’t agree 100 percent of the time. In some cases, you may not even like them. I get it. Remember, they’re in their roles for a reason, and they just might know a few things. Be open and willing to listen to what they say. You may not agree with everything you hear, but at least you listened. Even if you don’t agree with what they say or how they say it, you’ve learned what not to do or how not to say it.

Some might think self-confidence is innate, or it is enough to feel it once and charge through the difficulties of life without hesitation. Bad news. Self-confidence is certainly not innate and there is no universal confidence. Practice and active repetition make the master. Standing up for myself once did start a change in me, but it didn’t grant me unlimited and never-ending confidence. It was just a start, a proof that I could be there for myself. If you have this belief, that you’re there for yourself, every situation seems more bearable, achievable or in my case, survivable. The more times you prove to yourself that you are there for yourself, and you’re enough to handle the situation, the more confident you’ll be.

Some city planning experts called for legislation against texting while walking that would be followed by a deep change of norms. This recommendation is based on the assumption that this change is welcomed, but laws banning texting while walking failed in Toronto, Arkansas, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey and New York. Meanwhile, high-tech firms are developing technological solutions to the problem, offering a transparent screen that allows pedestrians to see what is going on in front of them while texting. Another direction for adaptation to the problem was provided by city councils via better urban planning and interventions to generate awareness. Some towns and college campuses have put ‘look up’ signs in dangerous stairwells and intersections. Hong Kong added announcements in its subway system recommending that passengers look around; New York City reduced speeds for cars, and San Francisco fosters pedestrian-only corridors.

A couple of years ago, I became interested in what we call hardship inoculation. This is the idea that struggling with a mental puzzle―trying to remember a phone number or deciding what to do on a long Sunday afternoon―inoculates you against future mental hardships just as vaccinations inoculate you against illness. There is good evidence to support the idea that small doses of mental hardship are good for us. Young adults do much better on tricky mental puzzles when they’ve solved difficult rather than easy ones earlier. Adolescent athletes also thrive on challenges: we’ve found, for example, that college basketball teams do better when their preseason schedules are more demanding. These mild initial struggles are critical. Depriving our kids of them by making everything easier is dangerous―we just don’t know how dangerous.

The above graph shows the percentage of people from six countries who strongly agree or somewhat agree that they are worried about fake content on the Internet. ①92 percent of Brazilian respondents agree that they are concerned about what is real and what is fake on the web. ②In Greece and France, the total percentage of people who strongly or somewhat agree is the same, but the percentage of people who strongly agree in Greece is higher than that in France. ③In France, nearly 60 percent of people strongly agree, which is more than twice the amount of those who somewhat agree. ④While the total percentage of people who strongly or somewhat agree is 76 percent in both the USA and Turkey, the percentage of people who somewhat agree in Turkey is three times higher than that in the USA. ⑤Meanwhile, German respondents are the least worried about fake web content among the six countries, at 47 percent overall.

Maurice Maeterlinck, the greatest symbolist playwright of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was born on August 29, 1862, in Ghent, Belgium. He studied law and worked as a lawyer until 1889, when he decided to devote himself to writing. In 1897, Maeterlinck went to Paris, where he met many of the leading symbolist writers of the day. His first play, La Princesse Maleine (The Princess Maleine), was sent to major French symbolist poet and critic Mallarmé and became an immediate success. Another of his plays, L’Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird), was an international success and has been adapted several times as a children’s book and a major motion picture. The phrase “the bluebird of happiness” derives from this enormously popular and enduring story. Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1911. He died of a heart attack on May 6, 1949, in Nice, France.

T-Shirt Design Contest

Open to all high school students in Chicago The perfect opportunity to express yourself creatively!

Design Theme
• Your creation should be about your favorite “hero from Chicago.”

Guidelines
• You must use solid lines and only up to 3 colors.
• Entries must be scanned and submitted by email to thearn@chicagocharities.org.

Prizes
• 1st - $500
  2nd - $300
  3rd - $200
* The design of the first prize winner will be used on Hero Parade T-shirts!

Deadline & Winner Announcement
• All submissions must be received by March 31st.
• The winners will be announced on www.heroparade.org on April 11th.

For full contest guidelines call Thomas Hearn at (773) 536-3710.

E-Waste Collection Day

Disposing of electronics responsibly through recycling is crucial in keeping our community clean and vibrant.

Date and Time: Saturday, May 19, 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Location: Woodbury Campus East Parking Lot 22 Redford Street, Portland, ME

Items for Collection:
TVs, Computers, Monitors, Printers, Stereos, Cell phones, Cameras, Microwaves & Other household electronic waste

Items Not Accepted:
Refrigerators, Air conditioners, Batteries, Light bulbs, Smoke detectors

Collection Day Tips:
We think a lot of people will come, so please expect to wait some time. Stay in your vehicle, and our staff will help you unload items.

All the money earned from the event will be donated to the Maine Children’s Cancer Center.

According to Pierre Pica, understanding quantities approximately in terms of estimating ratios is a universal human intuition. In fact, humans who do not have numbers have no choice but ①to see the world in this way. By contrast, understanding quantities in terms of exact numbers is not a universal intuition; it is a product of culture. The precedence of approximations and ratios over exact numbers, Pica suggests, ②is due to the fact that ratios are much more important for survival in the wild than the ability to count. ③Faced with a group of spear-wielding adversaries, we needed to know instantly whether there were more of them than us. When we saw two trees we needed to know instantly ④that had more fruit hanging from it. In neither case was it ⑤necessary to enumerate every enemy or every fruit individually. The crucial thing was to be able to make quick estimates of the relative amounts.
*enumerate: 일일이 세다

Hypothesis is a tool which can cause trouble if not used properly. We must be ready to abandon or modify our hypothesis as soon as it is shown to be (A) consistent / inconsistent with the facts. This is not as easy as it sounds. When delighted by the way one’s beautiful idea offers promise of further advances, it is tempting to overlook an observation that does not fit into the pattern woven, or to try to explain it away. It is not at all rare for investigators to adhere to their broken hypotheses, turning a blind eye to contrary evidence, and not altogether unknown for them to (B) deliberately / unintentionally suppress contrary results. If the experimental results or observations are definitely opposed to the hypothesis or if they necessitate overly complicated or improbable subsidiary hypotheses to accommodate them, one has to (C) defend / discard the idea with as few regrets as possible. It is easier to drop the old hypothesis if one can find a new one to replace it. The feeling of disappointment too will then vanish.
*subsidiary: 부차적인

My mom worked as a nurse in a clinic in Vallejo, California. One day a patient, Catherine, came into the clinic and my mom admired her dress. The woman explained that ①she had made the dress and that she used to be a seamstress when she lived in her home country of Jamaica. She had recently moved to the U.S. and hadn’t been able to bring her sewing machine with ②her and wasn’t able to afford to buy one. Soon after their meeting, my mom continued to think about this lovely Jamaican woman. There had to be something she could do to help ③her. Searching the thrift shops in our area, my mom finally found a used sewing machine. It was the perfect gift for ④her new acquaintance. It wasn’t long before my mom began bringing her clothing in need of repair or requiring alterations. Soon, Catherine was making clothes for our family. Eventually ⑤she was able to start a small seamstress business.
*seamstress: 여자 재봉사

Hardly any discovery is possible without making use of knowledge gained by others. The vast store of scientific knowledge which is today available could never have been built up if scientists did not pool their contributions. The publication of experimental results and observations so that they are available to others and open to criticism is one of the fundamental principles on which modern science is based. _____________ is contrary to the best interests and spirit of science. It prevents the individual from contributing to further progress; it usually means that he or his employer is trying to exploit for their own gain some advance made by building on the knowledge which others have freely given. Much research is carried out in secret in industry and in government war departments. This seems to be inevitable in the world as it is today, but it is nevertheless wrong in principle. Ideally, freedom to publish should be a basic right of all research workers.

Hands are in fact used for typing in two senses of the word: We use fingers to write words with keyboards, and we also use them as input for ____________________. We can often tell what type of person we are viewing by looking at his or her hands. In this way, hands communicate identity. Consider gender. One’s hands can indicate whether a person is masculine or feminine by use of culturally specific gender markers such as long nails, nail polish, or gendered jewelry. In India, henna paintings are made on the hands of a bride who is about to be married. In many cultures, a ring indicates marital status. Rings may also indicate personal interests, taste, and subculture. A skull ring may say “rocker,” a class ring may say “college graduate,” and a cross on one’s ring may say “Christian.” Ostentatiously jeweled rings can also convey financial wealth.
*ostentatiously: 과시적으로

It’s a well-known fact that the food industry uses colors such as synthetic beta-carotene (an orange-yellow dye) in an attempt _____________________. Take margarine, for example: Its natural color is really more of a white, and its taste is oilier than that of yellow butter. The addition of beta-carotene makes margarine look more like butter, and it appears creamier than it really is. The “margarine question” goes back surprisingly far. In 1895, C. Petersen gave a lecture with that title at the general meeting of the Association of the German Dairy Industry in Berlin, which included a comment about the color of margarine. “We’ll have to raise the question as to why margarine is dyed the color of butter, and the only possible answer to that question is because it is believed that it will make people think that they are in fact consuming butter.” And even if this addition of color was presented as harmless, he added, it was still done “for the purpose of deception.”

Automaticity works because it’s fast. All we need to do is hold an image in our mind, and our automated motor plan will run off smoothly. But we, because we’re clever and think we know better, don’t let it. We interfere, by thinking. We think in words, and we can only process words slowly, so all we achieve is that we disrupt our automaticity. We allow our conscious mind (us) to dominate our subconscious mind (our habits and automated motor plans), trying to force our body through movements it doesn’t want to make. We do this because we’ve read books on technique and believe we know all the best angles, positions, and movements. But a better plan would be to allow our subconscious mind, which does know the best way to move, to get on with moving. Once we’ve automated a skill, we can ___________________________.

There is a widely accepted theory in social psychology known as the pratfall effect, which actually states that making certain kinds of mistakes makes you more likable because you are relatable in your vulnerability. ①This phenomenon has been tested and confirmed many times over, and remembering it can help you to feel better in times of embarrassment or shame. ②One simple example of the pratfall effect’s validity is that people tend to like a person who clumsily trips on video more than one who doesn’t trip in the video. ③When we feel embarrassed, it’s natural to assume that others might like us less because we like ourselves a bit less in those moments. ④Feelings such as nervousness or anxiety can sometimes make us concentrate more on other things, which helps us forget about the mistake. ⑤But if we don’t take ourselves too seriously in those moments and bear them with a smile, it can even be attractive to others.

If a carpenter only has a hammer and nails, then he will think about nailing things to whatever he is doing. If all he has is a saw, then he will think about ways of cutting pieces off of what he is doing.


(A) As a result, it can cause us to use the wrong tool. We tend to consider using only the tools we have easily available, the tools we have actually learned how to use, and how we can use them to get our work done.

(B) This was a great strategy back in the Paleolithic days, when we had limited tools. It helped us to figure out how to take a stick or a rock (the only tool we might have) and knock fruit out of a tree so we didn’t starve.

(C) Today, however, we have multiple tools at our disposal. Some of them are good and some are not so good. However, this way of thinking is still hard-wired in our brain.

When commercial refrigeration became a possibility in the late nineteenth century, it offered great advantages, both to consumers and to industry.


(A) And at some level, they were right, as anyone who has ever compared a tomato at room temperature with one from the fridge can confirm: one is sweetly fragrant and juicy; the other is metallic and dull. Every new technology includes both gain and loss.

(B) Yet there was a widespread terror of this new technology, from both buyers and sellers. Consumers were suspicious of food that had been kept in cold storage. Market traders, too, did not know how to think of this new chill. In the 1890s, some sellers in Paris felt that refrigeration would spoil their produce.

(C) Fridges were especially useful for storing perishable substances such as milk, which had previously been the cause of thousands of deaths every year in the big cities of the world. Refrigeration benefited traders too, creating a longer window of opportunity in which they could sell their food.

But again, not every city has taken advantage of these opportunities.

Urbanization has been taking place since the Neolithic Revolution, when agriculture enabled food surpluses to create a division of labor in settlements. (①) The unlocking of human ingenuity to work on technology, trade, and urban culture has created ever-expanding opportunities in cities. (②) However, while some cities took advantage of these new opportunities, many remained little more than rural trading posts. (③) Urban opportunities accelerated with the Industrial Revolution and more recently with the globalization of the economy. (④) Some cities, such as Liverpool, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, have struggled to adapt to the new opportunities and have relied for too long on outmoded methods of industrial production. (⑤) Yet other cities, such as Manchester and New York, have made the transition and are thriving.

The Maasai, however, are a small minority, and their communally held lands have often been taken by outsiders.

Since the 1970s, more and more Maasai have given up the traditional life of mobile herding and now dwell in permanent huts. (①) This trend was started by government policies that encouraged subdivision of commonly held lands. (②) In the 1960s, conventional conservation wisdom held that the Maasai’s roaming herds were overstocked, degrading the range and Amboseli’s fever-tree woodlands. (③) Settled, commercial ranching, it was thought, would be far more efficient. (④) The Maasai rejected the idea at first—they knew they could not survive dry seasons without moving their herds to follow the availability of water and fresh grass. (⑤) As East Africa’s human population grows, Maasai people are subdividing their lands and settling down, for fear of otherwise losing everything.

In 2006, researchers at the University of Missouri took twenty-eight undergraduates and asked them to memorize lists of words and then recall these words at a later time. To test whether distraction affected their ability to memorize, the researchers asked the students to perform a simultaneous task—placing a series of letters in order based on their color by pressing the keys on a computer keyboard. This task was given under two conditions: when the students were memorizing the lists of words and when the students were recalling those lists for the researchers. The Missouri scientists discovered that concurrent tasks affected both memorizing and recalling. When the keyboard task was given while the students were trying to recall the previously memorized words, there was a 9 to 26 percent decline in their performance. The decline was even more if the concurrent task occurred while they were memorizing, in which case their performance decreased by 46 to 59 percent.

When undergraduate participants were asked to carry out a simultaneous task to make them ____(A)____, they showed a(n) ____(B)____ in their ability to memorize words and to recall them.

We are accustomed to thinking of light as always going in straight lines. But it doesn’t. This is manifest when you view a mirage on a long straight highway on a hot day. The road looks wet way up ahead because light from the sky refracts, bending as it crosses the many successive layers of warm air near the surface of the road, until it heads back up to your eye.
The French mathematician Pierre de Fermat showed another way to understand this phenomenon. Light travels faster in warmer, less dense air than it does in colder air. Because the warmest air is near the surface, the light takes less time to get to your eye if it travels down near the ground and then returns up to your eye than it would if it came directly in a straight line to your eye. Fermat formulated a principle, which says that, to determine the ultimate path of any light ray, you simply need to examine all possible paths from A to B and find the one that takes the least time.
This makes it sound as if light has ______________, and I resisted the temptation to say light considers all paths and chooses the one that takes the least time. This is because I fully expect that my online opponent Deepak Chopra would later quote me as implying that light has consciousness. Light does not have consciousness, but the mathematical result makes it appear as if light chooses the shortest distance.

We are accustomed to thinking of light as always going in straight lines. But it doesn’t. This is manifest when you view a mirage on a long straight highway on a hot day. The road looks wet way up ahead because light from the sky refracts, bending as it crosses the many successive layers of warm air near the surface of the road, until it heads back up to your eye.
The French mathematician Pierre de Fermat showed another way to understand this phenomenon. Light travels faster in warmer, less dense air than it does in colder air. Because the warmest air is near the surface, the light takes less time to get to your eye if it travels down near the ground and then returns up to your eye than it would if it came directly in a straight line to your eye. Fermat formulated a principle, which says that, to determine the ultimate path of any light ray, you simply need to examine all possible paths from A to B and find the one that takes the least time.
This makes it sound as if light has ______________, and I resisted the temptation to say light considers all paths and chooses the one that takes the least time. This is because I fully expect that my online opponent Deepak Chopra would later quote me as implying that light has consciousness. Light does not have consciousness, but the mathematical result makes it appear as if light chooses the shortest distance.

(A) One young person applied for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the first interview, and the director did the last interview to make the final decision. The director found (a) his academic achievements were excellent all the way from secondary school until college. He asked, “Did you get any scholarships in school?” The youth answered, “None. My mother paid my school fees working as a clothes cleaner.”

(B) The next day, the youth went to the director’s office. The director noticed something had changed in the youth and said, “I want to recruit a person who appreciates the help and sacrifice of others and doesn’t think of money as the only goal in life. I want you to be our new sales manager.” Later on, this young person worked very hard and earned the respect of (b) his colleagues. All the employees worked well together, and the company’s performance improved tremendously.

(C) The director asked the youth to show his hands. The youth presented (c) him a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect. The director asked, “Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?” The youth answered, “No, she always wanted me to study and read more books.” The director said, “I have a request. When you go back home today, clean your mother’s hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.”

(D) That evening, the youth asked his mother to let him clean her hands. Her hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises on her hands. Some bruises were so painful that (d) his mother shivered when her hands were cleaned. He shed tears as he cleaned his mother’s hands. This was the first time he realized that it was this pair of hands that washed clothes every day to enable (e) him to study.

(A) One young person applied for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the first interview, and the director did the last interview to make the final decision. The director found (a) his academic achievements were excellent all the way from secondary school until college. He asked, “Did you get any scholarships in school?” The youth answered, “None. My mother paid my school fees working as a clothes cleaner.”

(B) The next day, the youth went to the director’s office. The director noticed something had changed in the youth and said, “I want to recruit a person who appreciates the help and sacrifice of others and doesn’t think of money as the only goal in life. I want you to be our new sales manager.” Later on, this young person worked very hard and earned the respect of (b) his colleagues. All the employees worked well together, and the company’s performance improved tremendously.

(C) The director asked the youth to show his hands. The youth presented (c) him a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect. The director asked, “Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?” The youth answered, “No, she always wanted me to study and read more books.” The director said, “I have a request. When you go back home today, clean your mother’s hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.”

(D) That evening, the youth asked his mother to let him clean her hands. Her hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises on her hands. Some bruises were so painful that (d) his mother shivered when her hands were cleaned. He shed tears as he cleaned his mother’s hands. This was the first time he realized that it was this pair of hands that washed clothes every day to enable (e) him to study.

(A) One young person applied for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the first interview, and the director did the last interview to make the final decision. The director found (a) his academic achievements were excellent all the way from secondary school until college. He asked, “Did you get any scholarships in school?” The youth answered, “None. My mother paid my school fees working as a clothes cleaner.”

(B) The next day, the youth went to the director’s office. The director noticed something had changed in the youth and said, “I want to recruit a person who appreciates the help and sacrifice of others and doesn’t think of money as the only goal in life. I want you to be our new sales manager.” Later on, this young person worked very hard and earned the respect of (b) his colleagues. All the employees worked well together, and the company’s performance improved tremendously.

(C) The director asked the youth to show his hands. The youth presented (c) him a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect. The director asked, “Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?” The youth answered, “No, she always wanted me to study and read more books.” The director said, “I have a request. When you go back home today, clean your mother’s hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.”

(D) That evening, the youth asked his mother to let him clean her hands. Her hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises on her hands. Some bruises were so painful that (d) his mother shivered when her hands were cleaned. He shed tears as he cleaned his mother’s hands. This was the first time he realized that it was this pair of hands that washed clothes every day to enable (e) him to study.