【推荐1】National Park Service

Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia

Visitor center assistant

DESCRIPTION

Ferry (渡船) can hold up to 100 visitors and departs twice daily to the island. Volunteers

will help direct visitors to the parking area and ferry dock while answering questions about what to do and where to go during a visit.

THINGS THAT NEED TO BE DONE

Meet and greet visitors, answer repetitive questions, give directions, become knowledgeable about local history, clean high touch areas completely.

SKILLS

Office machines

General assistance

Public speaking

Visitor information

ABILITIES NEEDED

Outgoing person who has public speaking skills, able to walk/stand for 30 minutes at a time, willing to learn local history.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

Both being inside visitor center in climate controlled area and being outdoors in different weather conditions.

JOB RISKS

General housekeeping

Trip and fall risks

May have to talk to unhappy visitors

【推荐2】Sewing can be fun and creative. But have you ever thought that a sewing machine can also mean the world to many people around the globe that use it as their main source of income?

When Margaret Jankowski discovered this, she decided to found The Sewing Machine Project, an organization that collects donated used machines and redistributes them in remote places like Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Guam, and Kosovo. It also aims to help those in Detroit and New Orleans.

In 2004,when a tsunami (海啸) hit Sri Lanka, Margaret was deeply touched by the story of a particular woman. After the village she lived in was destroyed by the natural disaster, she lost everything, including her sewing machine, her approach to future earnings. This story made Margaret decide to collect used sewing machines and send them to Sri Lanka. After attending a local news program where she presented her idea, she started receiving scores of sewing machines.

The Sewing Machine Project covers a basic yet necessary need of many impoverished people around the world. For them, sewing can be a tool for survival. Whether in a factory or at home, a sewing machine can be the door to brighter financial opportunities. A sewing machine can also enable many to preserve their cultural identity. After Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2005, a community of New Orleans that wears skillfully-made suits for their own traditional festival lost many of their sewing machines. Since then, the non-profit organization has distributed hundreds of machines among the creators of the costumes, helping them maintain their tradition as well as their income.

【推荐3】Guardian Angels are people who travel on the New York subways and protect other passengers from criminals (罪犯). They are volunteers: they don’t get paid anything to do this job. The Guardian Angels would never have appeared without a young man named Curtis Sliwa.

Forty-three years ago, if you’d wanted to travel home late at night on the New York subway, you wouldn’t have felt very safe. Luckily, on February 13, 1979, at 3:00 a. m. , the first safety patrol (巡逻)—called The Team—went into action. Curtis Sliwa and his friend Don Chin began to cleanup crime on one of New York’s toughest subway lines, the Number 4 train. However, this was not a job for two, but a job for 13, so thirteen brave people walked into the last car of the Number 4 subway line in New York City—the “Mugger’s Express”. If they saw a danger of violence (暴力), they stopped it, using non-violent means. The group became known as the “Magnificent 13”.

The Magnificent 13 soon went from thirteen members to hundreds and they changed their name to the Guardian Angels Safety Patrol (GASP). At first, GASP faced opposition from the police, but they had the strong support of the public. Today, the Guardian Angels can be found all over the US. If you travel by subway, you will see them wearing red hats and white T-shirts. Although Guardian Angels are not armed, if they’re present, a criminal will think twice before committing a crime.

The Guardian Angels also train young people to join them in their fight against crime. They believe that if they train groups of volunteers to patrol dangerous areas in New York, the city will be safer for everybody. “If we had more volunteers, we would be able to reduce the problems many cities face: violence, crime, and drugs. ”

They have also started after-school training programs inside high schools and community centers. If young people visit the Guardian Angels Headquarters (总部), volunteers will talk to them about their work and will then guide them through the Times Square area. It’s fun. It’s safe and meaningful!

【推荐2】Fluency is the rate at which the child reads. Fluent readers take note of things like question marks and adjust their voice. Their expression sounds natural, and their voice is not as flat as they read. Children who are fluent readers make their reading sound like talking.     1     Here are some ways to improve your children’s fluency.

First, it’s important to choose “just right” books. They will struggle to read books that are too difficult, spending their time trying to figure out unfamiliar words.     2     If a child is struggling with fluency, consider having him read books that are easy.

    3     It’s important to discuss what fluent reading sounds like but even better actually to set an example for your children. This can help your children understand what you mean when you ask them to use the expression more smoothly. Another choice is to have children listen to audiobooks to hear what fluent reading sounds like.

Children can improve their fluency through whispering phones. They are like pretend telephones that children read into. When children read into such phones, they can hear themselves well and use that feedback to think about their expression and reading rate.     4    

Use choral reading (合唱式阅读). This occurs when a group of children reads something together, saying the words at the same time. You might read the text out loud by yourself first.     5     Then you can read it together, with them matching your pace and expression.

【推荐3】Boys whose classmates think reading is for girls are more likely to perform poorly in this area, a new study suggests.

To conduct the study, researchers tested a total of 1,508 fifth-grade students in 60 classes in Germany, who had an average age of 10. The children filled out questionnaires in which they ranked whether they thought boys or girls were better at reading, which gender read more, and which gender had more fun doing so. They also assessed their own enjoyment and skill in the activity, and completed reading tests.

Past studies suggested the stereotypes (刻板印象) that reading is for girls and math is for boys are widespread, so the researchers wanted to see if this could contribute to a gap in skills. Their study revealed that boys who believed gender stereotypes about reading were less likely to see themselves as competent and motivated in this regard. The researchers also found boys whose classmates thought reading was for girls not only had similar attitudes about themselves, but also appeared to perform worse in tests. They discovered girls generally exhibited better reading and writing ability than boys as early as the fourth grade. And as they got older that achievement gap became increasingly obvious. At the same time, the gender stereotype didn’t appear to affect girls positively or negatively. However, the study’s authors acknowledged that their data might not be accurate as they relied on the children’s honesty. They’ll conduct further research.

One of the authors of the study said, “To reduce socially determined gender disparities (不一致) in reading, it may help to create contexts that discourage students from acting on their stereotypical beliefs.” The study is the latest to examine how gender stereotypes affect young people. Late last year, a separate team of researchers found teaching teenage boys about gender equality could prevent them from being violent.

【推荐2】It was one of those freezing cold New England mornings in 1964. A four-day-old snow had turned to ice as it pressed against my bedroom window. In my twelve-year-old sleepiness, I staggered through the dark hallway into the bedroom, hearing the truck’s engine idling (空转) outside.

Staring out, I saw his figure — a dark shadow moving against the white background — his breath clouding the air when he breathed. I heard his work boots crunching the hard snow with his giant steps. I saw his dark face hidden beneath a knit cap, the upturned coat collar, the woolen scarf wrapped around his neck and chin. One gloved hand guided the ice scraper (刮削器) across the truck’s windshield. The other brushed the shavings like a crystal bear d from the truck’s old weathered face.

That was my daddy. Driven by a commitment and responsibility, he was taught to move with a quick purpose during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Daddy was like a silent gladiator (角斗士) who was stepping once more into the day’s battlefield. Daddy was always awake while the rest of the world slept. And as he slid behind the steering wheel, driving carefully from the driveway onto the street, the truck was swallowed up by dawn’s dimness. As I returned to the warmth of my blankets — in my own bed, in my own room, I knew I could go back to sleep, to dream, because daddy was outside facing the cold.

Throughout many junior and senior high mornings, I watched my father go to work. I never told him how that vision affected me. When I reached my early thirties and I became a father myself, I saw my own father with greater clarity. As I awoke in the early morning hours, compromised my wants, dealt with insults and worked overtime in order to give my son his own room — with his own bed and his own dreams, I realized I was able to do those things because my father had done them for me.