Absence   

    If a student is absent, parents are asked to contact the school and report that absence. Simply ring the school and you will be directed to the absence phone system. You should then give the name of the student and their tutor teacher.

Attendance

    School hours are 08:35 to 15:00. If a student is late, they must sign in at the Student Office.

    School times are as follows: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

08:35 - 09:35  Period 1

09:35 - 10:35  Period 2

10:35 - 10:50  Tutor Time

10:50 - 11:10  Interval

11:10 - 12:05  Period 3

12:05 - 13:00  Period 4

13:00 - 13.45  Lunch

13:45 - 14:05  School-wide reading

14:05 - 15:00  Period 5

Wednesday Only

09:00 - 09:55  Period 1

09:55 - 10:50  Period 2

Rest of the times are the same as for the other days.

Cellphones

    The current cell phone policy is that, although permitted at school, they must not be used or turned on during class time.

    The gray-haired lady can't wait to leave the building to search for her dad. Unless watched, she will walk in the streets in an effort to find her father, who died 30 years ago.

    Not all cases of Alzheimer's disease look like this, but Alzheimer's is a serious disease that is said to be the fourth or fifth leading cause of death for people over age 75. It is said that about three percent of the U.S. population over age 65 have Alzheimer's. In the early stages; people may exhibit short-term memory loss. Some may experience changes in personality, easy to be angry. As the disease progresses, patients might lose the ability to move and may be unable to speak or move at all. This progressive disease generally lasts 8 to 10 years before death occurs.

    While no one is certain what causes these changes in the brain's nerve fibers, their effect is certain. Alzheimer's destroys not only the patients, but also spouses（配偶）, friends and families.

    What should you do if you notice progressive memory loss in yourself or a loved one? Have the person examined by a doctor who is a specialist in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Though many reasons other than Alzheimer's disease may cause memory loss, its early diagnosis（诊断）and treatment may delay some of the most serious effects.

    What feeling will you likely experience if a loved one suffers from Alzheimer's disease? A person will often go through the various stages of sadness, shock, anger, and so on. If the spouse develops the disease, you may experience hurt and disappointment when he or she doesn't remember you are married.

    Life for the Alzheimer's patients and their loved ones will never be the same as the disease progresses, bringing a deep sorrow, loss and even anger towards God. No matter what feelings are present, facing them honestly will serve one better than burying them.

    When you're lying on the white sands of the Mexican Riviera, the stresses of the world seem a million miles away. Hey, stop! This is no vacation-you have to finish something!

    Here lies the problem for the travel writer and critic Edie Jarolim "I always loved traveling and always liked to eat, but it never occurred to me that I could make money doing both of those things," Jarolim said. Now you can read her travel advice everywhere—in Arts and Antiques, in Brides, or in one of her there books, The Complete Idiot's Travel Guide to Mexican Beach Resorts.

    Her job in travel writing began some eight years ago. After getting a PhD in English in Canada, she took a Test.

    Frommer's travel guides, passed it, and got the job. After working at Frommer's, Jarolim worked for a while at Rough Guides in London, then Fodor's, where she fell so in love with a description of the Southwest of the U.S. that she moved there.

    Now as a travel writer, she spends one-third of her year on the road. The rest of the time is spent completing her tasks and writing reviews of restaurants at home in Tucson, Arizona.

    As adventurous as the job sounds, the hard part is fact-checking all the information. Sure, it's great to write about a tourist attraction, but you'd better get the local museum hours correct or you could really ruin someone's vacation.

C

Plastic-Eating Worms

    Humans produce more than 300 million tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that winds up in landfills(垃圾填埋场), and up to 12 million tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no effective way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms.

    Researchers in Spain and England recently found that the worms of the greater wax moth can break down polyethylene, which accounts for 40% of plastics. The team left 100 wax worms on a commercial polyethylene shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and broke down about 92 milligrams, or almost 3% of it. To confirm that the worms' chewing alone was not responsible for the polyethylene breakdown, the researchers made some worms into paste(糊状物) and applied it to plastic films. 14 hours later the films had lost 13% of their mass — apparently broken down by enzymes (酶) from the worms' stomachs. Their findings were published in Current Biology in 2017.

    Federica Bertocchini, co-author of the study, says the worms' ability to break down their everyday food — beeswax — also allows them to break down plastic. ＂Wax is a complex mixture, but the basic bond in polyethylene, the carbon-carbon bond, is there as well, ＂she explains, ＂The wax worm evolved a method or system to break this bond. ＂

    Jennifer DeBruyn, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, says it is not surprising that such worms can break down polyethylene. But compared with previous studies, she finds the speed of breaking down in this one exciting. The next step, DeBruyn says, will be to identify the cause of the breakdown. Is it an enzyme produced by the worm itself or by its gut microbes(肠道微生物)?

    Bertocchini agrees and hopes her team's findings might one day help employ the enzyme to break down plastics in landfills. But she expects using the chemical in some kind of industrial process — not simply ＂millions of worms thrown on top of the plastic.＂

    They say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well, there is one lady who believes that it's actually chocolate. At 102 years of age, she's living proof.

    According to Boonville, Indiana's Eunice Modlin, a daily dose of chocolate has been the key to a long and healthy life. Specifically, two pieces of dark chocolate. It's not just Eunice who believes this.

    Many scientists have attributed the sweet to health benefits such as lower chances of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

    However, researchers believe that Eunice might be overlooking the fact that she has never smoked or drunk alcohol in her long life, and that chocolate might not be the significant cause of her longevity.

    "There are so many other factors to her long life and chocolate isn't the only one," nutritionist Vanessa Rissetto said. "Genes, her diet in general…are probably the main reasons."

    At any rate, Eunice is still alive and kicking. With four children, seven grandkids, 14 great-grandkids and 11 great-great grandkids, this lady has a big family.

    It must be noted that Eunice was also very athletic, being an archer in her 20s .Amazingly, she has lived through tough times such as the Great Depression and World War II .Also, the healthy blood runs through the veins of other family members. Eunice's brother is also still alive, at 101 years of age.

    No matter what you might think, Eunice's consumption of chocolate can't be ignored. In 2015, a BMJ study showed that a daily treat of one small bar would give the consumer 23% less chance of having a stroke (中风).

    What is in the sweet that makes it so beneficial? Apparently, cocoa beans have flavonoids, plant nutrients that have useful antioxidants (抗氧化剂).

    "Not all chocolate is created equal," Rissetto warns. "Dark chocolate has more flavonoids than milk chocolate, and white chocolate—which does not actually contain chocolate—is not a good source of flavonoids."

After years of teachers asking for the right answers, students aren't used to someone asking for the wrong ones. Students' failure tends to create mental burden that negatively affects learning. Lifting the burden requires us to face failure bravely and encourage students to accept it as a natural part of getting educated. While educators have to make sure that students have the right content and support to avoid long-term failure, it is just as important to accept mistakes as a normal part of education.

Sadly, our culture is so focused on success or perfection that students generally aren't taught about failure. To fill the gap, I share with students a Samuel Beckett quote "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better". It suggests one becomes better after each failure. I also play a video on game designed by Extra Credits, which shows people can quickly declare their ways as a failure if they don't work out and then learn from. them to move on. Both the quote and the video can help students get a more positive attitude towards failure.

Teachers can help students accept failure better. In her piece "5-Minute Film Festival: Freedom to Fail Forward", Edutopia author Amy Erin Borovoy had a set of videos-and articles on the subject of failure. Borovoy reminds readers that "a true thinker learns as much from failure as from success." Taking these short videos as monthly or weekly reminders can, be a great way to start "how have we failed and what have we learned" discussions with students.

Teachers can actually use a technique called "Effective Failure" to teach about failure at any time. In my writing class, I often have students volunteer to pick out the worst writing of their own. This lets writers deepen their understanding of why a sentence, word choice, or paragraph construction has failed, and it inspires a sincere interest in better writing. This makes failure work well in class.

Also, remember that students are not the only ones who can learn from their mistakes. As those who teach students, we should do that too.