I met Mrs. Neidl in the ninth grade on a stage­design team for a play and she was one of the directors. Almost instantly I loved her. She had an unpleasant voice and a direct way of speaking，_________ she was encouraging and inspiring. For some reason, she was impressed with my work and Mrs. Neidl would ask me for my _________. She wanted to know how I thought we should _________ things. At first I had no idea how to answer because I knew _________ about stage design! But I slowly began to respond to her _________. It was cause and effect; She believed I had opinions, so I began to form them. She trusted me to complete things, so I completed them perfectly. She loved how _________ I was, so I began to show up to paint more and more. She believed in me, so I began to believe in myself.

Mrs. Neidl’s _________ that year was, “Try it. We can always paint over it later！” I began to take risks. I had been so afraid of failing but suddenly there was no failing — only things to be _________ upon. I leaned to dip my brush into the paint and _________ create something.

The shy, quiet freshman achieved success that year. I was __________ in the program as “Student Art Assistant” because of the time and effort I’d put in. It was that year that I __________ I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing stage design.

Being on that stage­design __________ with Mrs.Neidl changed me completely. Not only was I stronger and more competent than I had thought, but I also __________ a strong interest and a world I hadn’t known existed. She taught me not to care what people think I should do. She taught me to take chances and not be __________. Mrs. Neidl was my comforter when I was upset. Her trust in me has inspired me to do things that I never imagined __________.

Michael Todd wore the same old clothes for the first three weeks of school. When some kids began to ______ that, they piled it on. Todd became the target of ______. But there was little Todd could do.

The kids taking the ______ were Garrett and Graham. But over time, they realized their seemingly making fun of Todd was ______ bullying(欺凌) and was hurting Todd. "Finally something ______ I knew I needed to do something ______ the thing got much worse," Graham said. So he and Garrett ______ a plan. The two went home and ______ through their rooms. They asked Todd to come into the ______ the next day at school. Todd was understandably nervous of being called out by them.

"He looked ______," Graham said. "I told him, 'We make a (n) ______ for starting the unkind thing, and want to ______ it.'" He then handed Todd a bag. Inside were clean shirts and a new pair of shoes. Todd was _______

Reflecting on the day he was called to the hall, Todd said it "marked the ______ of my life". Because he got much more than clothes and shoes. He's no longer being ______ at lunch. Now he eats with his new friends, Garrett and Graham.

I was the new teacher at school, and Clarissa, a fifth-grader, was messy. Clarissa saw no need for _______. “It’s my space!” was most often her _______ when requested by classmates. So the days went by and the _______ began to worsen.

“Clarissa, get your purse out of the doorway. I’m tired of tripping over it!” they’d say. I _______ she was beginning to keep herself away from her classmates. I had to find a _______.

One afternoon when I sat at my desk looking around the room, an idea sprang into my head. Standing near my desk was an old and _______ filing cabinet (柜). What if Clarissa had some space that was _______ her own?

I began to work. I moved her desk and all her things near the cabinet. I selected some clean _______ and cut out a place card. On it I wrote, “Clarissa’s Space” and _______ it on top of the cabinet.

The next morning she came in the room ________, already arguing with a classmate. She ________ her new space almost immediately. Quietly she asked, “Is this mine?”

“It’s for your things if you feel like you need it,” I said ________, busying myself with papers on my desk.

Clarissa spent the rest of the year keeping her things together in her space. ________ was at hand in our classroom. A beaten-up old cabinet gave a gift to this child, the gift of ________ a different path for someone to walk who might be ________ in some way.