My school stood in a big square playground in southeastern South Dakota. One teacher taught all grades, first through eighth. Most grades had only two or three students.

    Our school day started with the flag pledge(宣誓). Then the teacher called one grade at a time to the recitation bench beside her desk. She'd check our work, explain the new lesson, and dismiss us to go back to our own desks and do our new work, all in less than ten minutes per grade.

    At noon we ate lunches we had brought. Our lunches consisted of homemade sandwiches and if we were lucky, dessert. My favorite dessert was a fresh pear, and a piece of Mom's delicious sour cream chocolate cake.

    The annual Christmas program was the most exciting part of the year. We hurried through our lessons during December to allow time to practise poems, songs, and plays.

    A few days before the performance, the school board members borrowed equipment from the town and set up a stage across one side of the classroom. We hung bed sheets for curtains.

    On the evening of the performance, petrol lanterns hanging along the walls cast a warm, though not very bright, light over the gathering crowd. We could hardly contain our excitement as we looked from behind the curtains to wave at our parents.

    On a spring Sunday in a new term, just before the last day of the school term, everyone in the neighborhood gathered for a picnic. Our moms set fried chicken, bowls of salads, and desserts on the teacher's desk and the library table. After the dinner, we played games. One of the school board members brought big buckets of ice cream in the afternoon to top off the picnic. How we looked forward to that treat!

    I was just nineteen years old when I started my first teaching position in a country school with thirteen students. I felt excited, nervous and happy as I prepared my lunch bucket the first morning of the term. I can't remember what kind of sandwiches I packed, but I do remember I put in a fresh pear and a piece of chocolate cake for dessert!

Evening Workshops

    Optional evening workshops will be held at small restaurants or other meeting places near the conference hotel. Meals and other costs are not included but are also optional. Locations will be announced at the conference site. Workshops are very loosely organized and most represent discussions that have been held at Society for Economic Botany (SEB) meetings over a series of years.

    Workshop 1: Student Network

    Date: Wednesday evening, Feb. 5^th

    Chairs: Hugo de Boer and Arika Virapongse Sponsor: Society for Economic Botany

    Description: Student members of the SEB hold a networking mixer each year in order to meet each other and to become familiar with a variety of educational programs and faculty advisors(大学指导老师). Faculty members who are part of training programs are encouraged to join the mixer to meet and talk with students.
     Workshop 2: Botanical Film Making
    Date : Wednesday evening, Feb. 5^th Chair : David Strauch

    Sponsor : University of Hawaii

    Description : Digit al film making is a particularly useful tool of linking cultural information to recognizable plants. This workshop is aimed towards increasing the quality of material recorded by giving participants greater control over the medium. We will cover technical aspects (e.g. camera settings, audio), technical aspects (framing, lighting, focus), and some ways of presenting the material. Experienced filmmakers are encouraged to attend, and participants are welcome to bring their own camera equipment.

    Workshop 3: Collections for Botany

    — Collections Development and Management Date: Friday evening, Feb. 7^th

    Chair: Jan Salick

    Sponsor: Society for Economic Botany

    Description: SEB is a network of researchers who have been developing standards for the development of collections of artifacts, plant samples and related materials. Participants discuss successes, problems, and funding sources for solving management issues.

    What do Leonardo da Vincii, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein have in common? They were all left-handed, along with other famous people including Brad Pitt Prince William, and Barack Obama. In fact, an estimated 13 percent of the world's population may be left-handed and still most people around the world are right-handed.

    What makes a person become right-handed rather than left-handed? As yet no one really knows for sure. One simple idea suggests that people normally get right-handedness from their parents. Studies have found that two right-handed parents have only a 9.5 percent chance of having a left-handed child, whereas two left-handed parents have a 26 percent chance of having a left-handed child. Another common theory is that left-handed people suffer mild brain damage during birth, which makes them left-handed. However, if this theory were true, it would not explain why the percentage of left-banded people is so similar in every society, when birth conditions vary so much from society to society.

    Whatever the reasons behind it, people's attitudes toward left-handedness have changed a lot over the years. Statistics show that although 13 percent of young people (10-20 years old) are left-handed, only 6 percent of the elderly are left-handed. Left-handed children used to be punished until they began using their right hand like other children, but today people who are left-handed are no longer looked down on nor are they considered abnormal. For most people today, either case is perfectly acceptable.

    After the examination, the doctor told my parents my sight would get worse and that I would lose my sight finally. On the way home from hospital, no one said a word. One day, would I only imagine the scenery beyond the glass rather than see it?

    That September, I entered middle school. Most nights I had homework that included an armful of books to read. To keep up with other children, I took great trouble to finish the task. With my nose a couple of inches from the page, I was tired easily. What's worse, after I had read several pages on my own, the words slipped off the page into inky pools.

    However, then I did not have audio books and electronic devices like kids do now. Instead, Mom volunteered to read out loud. Mom worked part time, cleaned the house, cooked and spent time with Grandma. In spite of being so busy, she showed up in my room like clockwork. She put on her reading glasses. Mom always thought those glasses made her look old. To me, she looked like a teacher.

    In my room, Mom's voice compared with the ticking of the clock. Being forced to focus on listening, I found a way to keep my marks up and compete with the other kids. When the teacher asked a question, I raised my hand with confidence. Teachers praised me for having a good memory. Reading removed my fear for my failing sight, reading also made me curious about other people's challenges and how they managed. Though I could not use my eyes to fix on each passage, my mind lit up with every new book.

    True to what the doctor said, the worst came, but thanks to Mom, my sense of hearing now allows me to “see”. This was the most precious gift from a mother to her child.

    Anyone who cares about what schools and colleges teach and how their students learn will be interested in the memoir (回忆录) of Ralph W. Tyler, who is one of the most famous men in American education.

    Born in Chicago in 1902, brought up and schooled in Nebraska, the 19-year-old college graduate Ralph Tyler became hooked on teaching while teaching as a science teacher in South Dakota and changed his major from medicine to education.

    Graduate work at the University of Chicago found him connected with honorable educators Charles Judd and W. W. Charters, whose ideas of teaching and testing had an effect on his later work. In 1927, he became a teacher of Ohio State University where he further developed a new method of testing.

    Tyler became well-known nationally in 1938, when he carried his work with the Eight-Year Study from Ohio State University to the University of Chicago at the invitation of Robed Hutchins.

    Tyler was the first director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a position he held for fourteen years. There, he firmly believed that researchers should be free to seek an independent spirit in their work.

    Although Tyler officially retired (退休) in 1967, he never actually retired. He served on a long list of educational organizations in the United States and abroad. Even in his 80s he traveled across the country to advise teachers and management people on how to set objectives (目标) that develop the best teaching and learning within their schools.

    One of the most famous buildings in the United States is Carnegie Hall, the home of classical and popular music concerts in New York. Carnegie Hall is known not just for its beauty and history, but also for its amazing sound. It has been said that the hall itself is an instrument. It takes the music and makes it larger than life.

    Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who paid for its construction. Construction on Carnegie Hall began in 1890 and the official opening night was on May 5, 1891.

    The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1924 when it was sold to Robert E. Simon. The building became very old and in 1960, the new owner made plans to destroy it and build an office block. Isaac Stem led a group of people who fought to save Carnegie Hall and finally, the city of New York bought it for $5 million. It was then fixed up between 1983 and 1995.

    Advertisements and stories in newspapers about how Carnegie Hall needed help to recover its history led people to send in old concert programmes and information from all over the world. Over 12,000 concert programmes were received and with these it was possible to make a proper record of Carnegie Hall's concert history.

    Carnegie Hall is actually made up of several different halls, but the Main Hall, now called the Isaac Stern Hall, is the most famous. The hall itself can hold an audience of 2,804 in five levels of seating.

    Because the best and most famous musicians of all time have played at Carnegie Hall, it is the dream of most musicians who want to be great to play there. This has led to a very old joke which is now part of Carnegie Hall's history. Question: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Answer: "Practise, practise, practise."