Do you know an outstanding junior high or high school teacher, coach, guidance counselor, librarian，or headmaster? Nominate (提名)that special teacher you'll always remember and give him/her the chance to be recognized in a famous national magazine through "Educators of the Year Contest"!

Prizes

    Cash awards will be given to those from across the country who are given the honor of Educators of the Year. Besides, your winning essays will also be published in our magazine.

Guidelines

    We will only consider essays written by teens, and nominations must be for junior high or high school educators only. Elementary school educators are not suitable.

    Convince us your educator is special. Tell us about his or her style of teaching, his or her role in school activities, and community service. What has your educator done for the entire school, your class, for you or another student? Give examples with specific details. Keep your essay between 200 and 1,000 words. Remember to include the first and last name, position, and school of your educator in your essay.

Don't forget to submit (提交)your essays through our website. You can also read our submission guidelines for more information on this website.

The Deadline

    The deadline for submitting your essays is December 30. Your essays are accepted and will appear in our magazine all over the year. Winners will be made public after the January issue is published.

    Grown-ups are often surprised by how well they remember something they learned as children but have never practiced ever since. A man who has not had a chance to go swimming for years can still swim as well as ever when he gets back in the water. He can get on a bicycle after many years and still ride away. He can play catch and hit a ball as well as his son. A mother who has not thought about the words for years can teach her daughter the poem that begins “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” or remember the story of Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

    One explanation is the law of overlearning, which can be stated as follows: Once we have learned something, additional learning trials will help strengthen the related knowledge and skills.

    In childhood we usually continue to practice such skills as swimming, bicycle riding, and playing baseball long after we have learned them. We continue to listen to and remind ourselves of words such as “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and childhood tales such as Cinderella and Goldilocks. We not only learn but overlearn.

    The multiplication tables (乘法口诀表) are also an exception to the general rule that we forget rather quickly the things that we learn in school, because they are another of the things we overlearn in childhood.

    The law of overlearning explains why cramming for an examination, though it may result in a passing grade, is not a satisfactory way to learn a college course. By cramming, a student may learn the subject well enough to get by on the examination, but he is likely soon to forget almost everything he learned. A little overlearning, on the other hand, is really necessary for one's future development.

    I grew up with a fat dad 450 pounds at his heaviest. Every week he would try a new diet, and my family ended up eating whatever strange food he was trying at that moment.

    After my third-grade year, my dad landed a life-changing job in Manhattan. My mom, my little sister and I had to move away from our hometown, Chicago, and leave my grandmother and her beautiful food behind.

    Leaving my grandmother was far more frightening than the move to New York City.  There would be no more special weekends at my grandmother's house, the only place I can remember feeling happy, safe and nourished (有营养的). It was what I desired. In this new city, I felt extremely alone and lost, and I missed my grandmother terribly.

    My grandmother knew just how I felt. And she knew the cure. Every week, she would send me a card with a$ 20 bill, a recipe and a list of what to buy at the market. It kept us bonded, and her recipes filled my body and soul.

    Over the years, I have grown to better understand my father's struggles with weight and the toll (代价) it took on him and those who love him. I have come to realize he was driven not by vanity (自负) or selfishness as much as by a deep pain, I  And in spite of growing up in such an unhealthy eating environment ( or perhaps be-cause of it), as an adult I found a passion and a career as a nutrition consultant.

    Today, my father weighs 220 pounds and is a vegan(素食者). How he got there is a story I hope to share in the coming weeks. More importantly, food is no longer a barrier that keeps us apart, but a bridge that keeps us connected. There is nothing my dad enjoys more than talking with me about dietary theories and his weightloss victories. And now I am the one regularly sending recipe cards to my father s house, just as my grandmother did for me.

    Milton Hershey was born near the small village of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, in 1857. He only attended school through the fourth grade; at that point, he was apprenticed(做学徒) to a printer in a nearby town. After a while, he left the printing business and was apprenticed to a Lancaster, Pennsylvania candy maker. And at the age of eighteen, he opened his own candy store in Philadelphia. In spite of his talents as a candy maker, the shop failed after six years.

    After the failure of his Philadelphia store, Milton headed for Denver, where he learned the art of making caramels(焦糖). Then in Denver, Milton once again attempted to open his own candy-making businesses, in Chicago, New Orleans, and New York City. Finally, in 1886, he went to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he raised the money necessary to try again. This company— the Lancaster Caramel Company—established Milton's reputation as a master candy maker.

    In 1893, Milton attended the Chicago International Exposition, where he saw a display of German chocolate-making implements. Fascinated by the equipment, he purchased it for his Lancaster candy factory and began producing chocolate, which he used for coating his caramels. By the next year, production had grown to include cocoa, sweet chocolate, and baking chocolate. The Hershey Chocolate company was born in 1894 as a subsidiary(子公司) of the Lancaster Caramel Company. Six years later, Milton sold the caramel company, but reserved the rights, and the equipment, to make chocolate. He believed that a large market of chocolate consumers was waiting for someone to produce reasonably priced candy. He was right.

    Milton Hershey returned to the village where he had been born, in the heart of dairy country, and opened his chocolate manufacturing plant. With access to all the fresh milk he needed, he began producing the finest milk chocolate. The plant that opened in a small Pennsylvania village in 1905 is today the largest chocolate factory in the world. The sweets created at this facility are favorites around the world.

    The area where the factory is located is now known as Hershey, Pennsylvania. Within the first decades of its existence, the town of Hershey thrived, as did the chocolate business. A bank, a school, churches, a department store, even a park and a trolley system all appeared in short order; the town soon even had a zoo. Today, a visit to the area reveals the Hershey Medical Center, Milton Hershey School, and Hershey's Chocolate World—a theme park where visitors are greeted by a giant Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. All of these things— and a huge number of happy chocolate lovers—were made possible because a caramel maker visited the Chicago Exposition of 1893!

    There are plenty of mindless activities to keep a child busy in this information age. Yet despite the competition, my 8-year-old daughter Alice wants to spend her leisure time writing short stories. She wants to enter one of her stories into a writing contest, a competition which she won last year.

    As a writer, I know about winning contests—and about losing them. I know what it is like to work hard on a story only to receive a rejection letter from the publisher. I also know the pressure of trying to live up to a reputation created by previous victories. What if she doesn't win the contest again? That's the strange thing about being a parent. So many of our own past scars and destroyed hopes can resurface in our children.

    A revelation (启示) came last week when I asked her, "Don't you want to win again?" "No," she replied. "I just want to tell the story of an angel going to first grade."

    I had just spent weeks correcting her stories as she spontaneously (自发地) told them. Telling myself that I was an experienced writer guiding the young writer across the hall, I offered suggestions for characters, conflicts and endings for her tales. The story about a fearful angel starting first grade was quickly "guided" by me into the tale of a little girl with a wild imagination taking her first music lesson. I had turned her contest into my contest without even realizing it.

    Staying back and giving kids space to grow is not as easy as it looks. Because I know very little about farm animals who use tools or angels who go to first grade, I had to accept the fact that I was co-opting (借鉴) my daughter's experience.

    While stepping back was difficult for me, it was certainly a good first step that I will quickly follow with more steps, putting myself far enough away to give her room but close enough to help if asked. All the while I will be reminding myself that children need room to experiment, grow and find their own voices.

    Western conservation groups are seeking stricter laws to deal with trade in endangered wildlife, but Dr. Paul Jepson warns that this isn't the best solution. He highlights the case of the Bali starling (八哥). Bringing in tougher laws created unexpected outcomes, which contributed to the bird's extinction in the wild in 2006.

    He said that the traditional law enforcement (执行) approach that outlawed (宣布……非法) ownership of the Bali starling in the 1980s and 1990s increased rather than reduced the demand for wild-caught Bali starlings. The bird has become a popular gift among the rich of Indonesia, who can gain more status by owning one.

    Instead, a case-by-case analysis might be needed. Last year, he said, a bird association set up a network of breeders (饲养者) among the owners of Bali starling on the island of Java. By introducing a "crowd-breeding" model, it transformed the bird into a species whose price and source of supply were publicly known. This lessened the status of keeping such birds and thereby reduced their profitability to black market suppliers.

    Another case was on Nusa Penida, an island southeast of Bali. A Balinese conservation group planned to release starlings on the island. Critics tried to block the plan, saying the island was outside the birds' native zone. Eventually, the Governor of Bali came up with a proposal. The starlings were given to a local temple as a ceremonial offering before they were released. This gave the Bali starling status as a "sacred bird", giving them protection under customary laws. Now the released starlings established a breeding population on Nusa Penida.

    Dr. Jepson commented, "I do not want to criticize the international approach seeking tighter law enforcement, but this case study shows we should not oversimplify how we respond to the problem of the wildlife trade. There is a growing body of evidence that shows more different approaches are sometimes needed to fit with the local social and political realities. We should tailor solutions on more of a case-by-case basis."