Whenever the word “hero” comes to me, I immediately think of three Hs: honorable, hardworking, and happy. When I think more about this word, I picture someone who has accomplished good things for people and tries to do the right thing. Hattie Elizabeth Alexander is one person whom I find to be very heroic.

Hattie was born in Baltimore, Maryland on April 5, 1901. During her time at college she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Bacteriology and Physiology. These were just the first steps towards what she was finally going to be remembered for. After college Hattie attended Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and received her medical degree.

After her education, she pursued her career, and after much time and hard work, she drastically reduced the number of infants (幼儿) dying from meningitis (脑膜炎). Hattie was very devoted to her work and helped at as many locations as she could. Spending plenty of time in the laboratory, Hattie successfully developed a cure against the disease, which decreased the death rate to 20 percent. At the same time, she was also a teacher working with Columbia University.

She was a caring lady interested in other people’s lives. When she was teaching at Columbia University, other members would talk to her about students that were failing their classes, and somehow Hattie could always find convincing reasons as to why they should not be driven away. Later, Hattie became an instructor in Pediatrics at New York City’s Babies Hospital. After many honors, she became the first woman president of the American Pediatric Society in 1965. This was her last major achievement, for soon after, Hattie died of cancer on June 24, 1968.

Hattie is my hero because her positive attitude and strength helped her accomplish great things for others. She gave them her strength by developing medicines against disease, which, by doing so, made them stronger. This is what makes Hattie Elizabeth Alexander my hero.

School bus drivers have to keep the kids safe on their way to and from school. But one driver, Patricia Reitz, goes way above and beyond. She has made it her mission to give each child a handmade hat to keep them warm in the winter.

Miss Patty—the name students, teachers and parents call her—has given away more than 7,000 hats in the nearly three decades she worked for the Clarence Central School District in New York, reported WGRZ.

“She cares about her students,” third grade teacher Deborah Bosworth told WGRZ. “Any student that has been on Miss Patty’s bus gets a hat, and they also get a friend. Miss Patty is one of the favorites.”

This tradition began when Reitz took up crocheting(针织). She would work on items while she waited for students to get on the bus after school. One boy got on the bus, and he asked what she was doing. He said wearing a hat would be great going down ski slopes(斜坡). So Reitz asked him what color he liked. “That started everything,” said Reitz. And it snowballed from there.

Reitz specializes in Santa hats, but she will make other hats too. The hats are two colors that the students choose and always have two tassels(流苏). Reitz buys all needed for the hats but she also receives gift cards from families especially around Christmas. This is a gift that comes from the heart. Despite the amount of work involved, Reitz has no intention of stopping. In fact, she has already began working on next year’s hats. “I’m going to do it until I can’t do it anymore,” she said.

While other school bus drivers will purchase hats and gloves for their charges, a homemade gift made with love brings warmth even during the coldest winter days.

To be a good teacher, you need some of the gifts of a good actor; you must be able to hold the attention and interest of your audience; you must be a clear speaker, with a good, strong, pleasing voice which is fully under your control; and you must be able to act what you are teaching, in order to make its meaning clear.

Watch a good teacher, and you will see that he does not sit still before his class:he stands the whole time he is teaching; he walks about, using his arms, hands and fingers to help him in his explanations, and his face to express feelings. Listen to him, and you will hear the loudness, the quality and the musical note of his voice always changing according to what he is talking about.

The fact that a good teacher has some of the gifts of a good actor doesn’t mean that he will indeed be able to act well on the stage, for there are very important differences between the teacher’s work and the actor’s. The actor has to speak words which he has learnt by heart; he has to repeat exactly the same words each time he plays a certain part, even his movements and the ways in which he uses his voice are usually fixed beforehand. What he has to do is to make all these carefully learnt words and actions seem natural on the stage.

A good teacher works in quite a different way. His audience takes an active part in his play：they ask and answer questions, they obey orders, and if they don’t understand something, they say so. The teacher therefore has to meet the needs of his audience, which is his class. He cannot learn his part by heart, but must invent it as he goes along.

I have known many teachers who were fine actors in class but were unable to take part in a stage-play because they could not keep strictly to what another had written.