During my first year as a middle school math teacher, I designed and tried a classroom money system to motivate and engage my students. Each day, students who came to class well prepared earned a salary of 25 “royal” dollars. From the salary earned, the students paid monthly rent on their chairs and taxes on their classroom materials. My goals for the program were to help students learn the importance of financial management while promoting positive classroom behavior.

I gave students daily opportunities to earn additional salary such as 10 dollars for catching my errors, 50 dollars for good mathematical arguments, and 100 dollars for outdoing an assessment. Students put any money they earned in our class bank. As the banker, I maintained the accounts and informed students of dangerously low balances. After all, students knew what happened when they didn’t have the money to pay rent, and none wanted to lose his or her chair. After the students paid their rent, taxes and any fines, they could spend their remaining money on class auction (拍卖) items like snacks and school supplies.

My system worked beautifully and the students were fully engaged. They soon realized that use of inappropriate language or coming late to class was not financially beneficial.

Three weeks into school Mayra met me at the door with a question.

“How much would it cost to buy my chair?”

“Buy your chair?”

“Well, if I could buy my chair, I won’t have to pay you rent each month. Then I’ll have more money to spend at the auction.”

“If you prefer to save your money and purchase your chair, you can buy it for 600 dollars.”

“So if I sit on the floor for twenty more days, I’ll have enough money to buy my chair?”

“Absolutely!”

She and several of her table mates began to gather their materials and returned to the floor of our classroom. I thought to myself, “This won’t last long.”

During my sixth-grade year, I was nervous about many things. I was afraid of being a role model on campus. I was afraid of going to a middle school the following year. But nothing compared to my biggest fear of all… puberty (青春期). I was getting to the age where my voice would start changing. At first, I was excited for my voice to get deeper. But then I learned that before your voice gets deeper, it can sometimes crack(嘶哑).

The first time it happened to me I was so embarrassed, but to my surprise, my friends didn’t make fun of me. In fact, they didn’t even mention it. That was reality. But in my self- conscious sixth-grade mind I was certain they were going to spend all day making fun of me behind my back. They were not having the same problem controlling their voices.

After my first voice crack experience, I was determined to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. At least not in public. So, I began clearing my throat before I spoke. Limiting how much I spoke and clearing my voice before I spoke made my break and lunch experiences much less stressful. This was great but there was a larger problem. I was more scared about having a voice crack during class.

There were reasons why having a voice crack in class was scarier. One of these reasons was that our class had a group of popular girls. Having a voice crack in front of them was a fear. Unfortunately, one day my worst frightening dream came true. It was about halfway through the year, when I was happy to have made it so long without a bad voice crack incident.

That day, when I walked through the door, the first thing I noticed was that we had a substitute(代课)teacher. I immediately started thinking about how the sub would need to take attendance. My permanent (长期的)teacher never had to. Since he already knew each student and where they sat, he just had everyone sit down in their assigned seat, and marked “absent” the students whose seats were empty.

My first marathon. It’s pouring rain, my legs were cold, and I was wishing I hadn’t been too nervous to eat a bigger breakfast. “There were tables of chocolate bars every mile at my last marathon,” Dad says.

Suddenly everyone around us starts moving. Way up ahead I see smoke from the cannon. I can’t believe we hadn’t heard it. It took ages to reach the starting line. Our marathon started.

Soon Dad started to slow down. After only a mile, I overtook everyone in sight. And Dad was way behind with his left leg cramped(抽筋).

I soon reached mile 5, and I was feeling good. I still hadn’t seen a chocolate bar anywhere. Maybe they didn’t have them! Instead, the streets were lined with fast-food places. But there were lines of runners at every shop.

By mile 10, my legs felt good but I was starving. How I wish I hadn’t just had one piece of toast for breakfast! It’s raining so hard that it hurt. My hands stung from the cold. I took a power gel out of pocket and tried to open it, but my hands were so cold they felt as if they were frozen into fists. On the balconies people yelled and waved to me. That cheered me up a bit.

Then I ran past mile 13, the halfway checkpoint. Up ahead I could see my mum and my little brother cheering for me. Hearing my name from their cheers, I felt refreshed and kept on running.

Mile 15. I saw food at last! There were tables full of bananas. I grabbed a banana and scoffed it down. Then I ripped the power gel open. My hands had come unfroze. I squeezed the packet and filled my mouth with the gel. Chocolate would taste better.

When I reached mile 20, and I didn’t want to run another inch. Every step jarred my leg.

I started walking the next mile before Dad caught up running in an awkward way.

Mile 25, we could hear the crowd at the finish line.

When my little brother Tom was four, Mom said something like “I’d give anything to have a few more hours in the day.” And Tom said, “Why don’t we buy a bigger clock?” If time worked that way, I could have used an extra-big clock last week!

Our teacher had asked us to make an art project showing how plants eat, “I can’t believe we only have two nights to finish it,” Noah said with a sigh. “I have no idea how I’ll get mine done.”

I didn’t say anything. Not because I was nervous—I wasn’t nervous at all. 1 love art projects! In fact, I was so relaxed that I didn’t work on the project at all on Monday night. I planned to start the minute I got home from baseball practice on Tuesday. But there was just one thing.

I forgot baseball would run later than usual because it was the day of Baseball Buddies, which happens every month, and it’s a chance for us older students to practise baseball with the adorable younger kids. The second I got home, I threw the entire craft box (手工盒) onto the kitchen table, took out my “How Plants Eat” paper, and started to work. But just then, the telephone rang.

It was my friend Ollie, who said his grandmother Abuela had just made cookies and wanted to know if I’d come help decorate them. I love decorating cookies, and I love, love, love Abucla’s world-famous Thanksgiving cookies that only happen once a year!

I had no choice. I had to go. Ollie and I put all the star cookies with red jam filling in one group, and all the snowflakes with white cream-cheese filling in another. It was 7 o'clock when I finally got home.1 planned to work on my project right after we ate. But then another interruption hit me.