【推荐1】After noticing that her eighth grade students had problems focusing during math class, a North Carolina teacher decided to channel (引导) their energy in a different way—cycling.

It doesn’t sound like the most common thing to do during math class, but Bethany Lambeth, a teacher from Wake County, says that ever since she fixed cycling machines under her students’ desks, the quality of their work has improved greatly. They are paying more attention to what the teachers say, and, most importantly, they are no longer fidgeting all the time.

“Before, they were drumming on their desks or touching other students. They don’t do that any more now. Their feet are getting the movement out,” she said. “There has been a huge increase in the quality of our students’ work and a decrease in the amount of missing work. I think the world is changing a lot and kids need to be able to do something different.”

Lambeth fixed the cycling machines at the end of last year, which cost around $150 each. The cost was covered by money from kind people. Not all desks have pedals (踏板) under them, so not all the children have to use one. The school is hoping to get more pedals because of the role cycling machines could play.

The kids clearly love the new “toys”. Sofia Fedele, one of Lambeth’s students, said cycling helped her focus on her work during class. “I usually tap my feet and stuff to keep me focused, I think pedaling is much better, it keeps me exercising and focused,” she said.

Quinn Spear, another student in Lambeth’s class, also mentioned the good effect on health of cycling during class. He told reporters that he had pedaled 5.5 miles and burned 133 calories, all before 10 a.m.

【推荐2】Suddenly another thought went through Kate’s mind like an electric shock. An express train was due to go past about thirty minutes later. If it were not stopped, that long train, full of passengers, would fall into the stream. “Someone must go to the station and warn the stationmaster,” Kate thought. But who was to go? She would have to go herself. There was no one else.

In wind and rain she started on her difficult way. Soon she was at the bridge that crossed the Des Moines River, a bridge also built of wood, just like the bridge across Honey Creek.

The storm had not washed this away, but there was no footpath across it. She would have to cross it by stepping from sleeper(枕木) to sleeper. With great care she began the dangerous crossing, sometimes on her hands and knees, hardly daring to look down between the sleepers into the wild flood waters below. If she should slip, she would fall between the sleepers, into the rapidly flowing stream.

At last—she never knew how long it had taken her—she felt solid ground under her feet. But there was no time to rest. She still had to run more than half a mile and had only a few minutes left. Unless she reached the station before the express did, many, many lives would be lost. She did reach the station just as the train came into sight. Fortunately the stationmaster was standing outside. “The bridge is down! Stop the train! Oh, please stop it!” Kate shouted breathlessly. The stationmaster went pale. He rushed into the station building and came back with a signal light. He waved the red light as the train came into the station. It was not a second too early.

【推荐1】I left university with a degree in English Literature, but no sense of what I wanted to do. Over the next six years, I was treading water, just trying to earn an income. I tried journalism, but I didn’t think I was any good, then finance, which I hated. Finally, I got a job as an assistant at a famous publisher. I loved working with books, although the job that I did was dull.

I had enough savings to take a year off work, and I decided to try to satisfy a deep-down wish to write a novel. Attending a Novel Writing MA course gave me the structure I needed to write my first 55,000 words.

It takes confidence to make a new start. There’s a dark period where you’re neither one thing nor the other. You’re out for dinner and people ask what you do, and you’re too ashamed to say, “Well, I’m writing a novel, but I’m not quite sure if I’m going to get there.” My confidence dived. Believing my novel could not be published, I put it aside.

Then I met an agent who said I should send my novel out to agents. So, I did and, to my surprise, got some wonderful feedback. I felt a little hope that I might actually become a published writer and after signing with an agent, I finished the second half of the novel.

The next problem was finding a publisher. After two and-a-half years of no income, just waiting and wondering, a publisher offered me a book deal — that publisher turned out to be the one I once worked for.

It feels like an unbelievable stroke of luck really. When you set out to do something different, there’s no end in sight. So to find myself in a position where I now have my own name on a contract of the publisher — to be a published writer — is unbelievably rewarding.