Ben is about to enter the seventh grade and most excited about meeting new kids. It will be fun to work on new activities. But he is concerned about new teachers and a new principal. “What if they are hard to get along with? What if they don’t like me?” He has already set some goals. They are: to get good grades, to do well in basketball, and to win a first - place award in the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science Competition. The last goal will be the most difficult. It’s so hard to think of a winning idea for a science project.

The Ohio school that Pat Betteley has taught at for the past ten years is an open school from the sixties. As a first - grade teacher, she is looking forward to the school year because she enjoys getting to know the children. But she has some concerns about the upcoming year. Class sizes are increasing. Some students have short attention spans (时间跨度) and little readiness skills. Support from parents is diminishing.

Dr. David Tager is excited about the new school year. As his daughter, Ali, prepares to enter the first grade, Dr. Tager shares mixed feelings - his eagerness to have Ali become a reader and his reluctance (不情愿) to let go of his six-year-old. “Will Ali have enough opportunities to learn? Will she get along with her peers (同伴)? Will she be well behaved?” But Ali’s enthusiasm and intelligence are indications that he doesn’t really need to worry.

Computer programmer David Jones earned ￡35,000 a year designing new computer games,yet he cannot find a bank prepared to let him have a check card.Instead,he has been told to wait another two years until he is 18.

He works for a small firm in Liverpool,where most young people of his age are finding jobs.David’s biggest headache is what to do with his money.Though he has high payment,he cannot drive a car,or get credit cards(信用卡).

David got his job four months ago,a year after leaving school with six O-levels(普通成绩) and working for a time in a computer shop.“I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs,”he said.

“I suppose ￡35,000 sounds a lot but I hope it will come to more than that this year.”He spends some of his money on records and clothes,and gives his mother ￡20 a week as he lives with his parents.But most of his spare time is spent working.

“Unfortunately,computing was not part of our studies at school,”he said.“But I had been studying it in books and magazines for four years in my spare time.I knew what I wanted to do and never considered staying on at school.Most people in this business are fairly young,anyway.I would like to earn a million and I suppose early retirement(退休) is a possibility.You never know when the market might disappear.”

Ever since I can remember my mom has always been growing things or talking about growing things. Unfortunately, I don’t exactly share her green thumb skills. She tells me it’s because I don’t give the plants the love they deserve. I won’t lie, that stings a little bit!

After a crazy few years of working my way through college and then the pandemic(大流行病), I felt I had this disconnection with my mom and her gardening. As a kid, I spent a lot of time with her in her garden. And those were some of the happiest moments of our lives. For Mother’s Day this year, I decided to get back in the garden to spend some quality time with her. Though we weren’t able to plant everything we wanted to, due to the weather, we had a good time.

My mom always makes sure to fertilize(施肥于) her garden with natural fertilizers. She doesn’t like using chemicals. It’s not good for pollinators(传粉者) and the chemicals can run off into the nearby river. Each year she designs her garden differently so that each section of the garden can have a variety of vegetables and later on, nutrients are added to the soil. “Where did you learn all of this?” I asked her. Growing up I was always under the impression that my mom just knew everything. It was not a wrong assumption, but I was curious. “Wisconsin Public Radio!” she said. “Each Friday it has Garden Talk where Larry Meiller interview s gardening experts about planting in Wisconsin.”

Besides a garden, my mom also grew a prairie, filled with tons of native Wisconsin flowers.   A pollinator paradise (乐园). This year, she planted sunflowers, purple coneflowers, and a variety of other wildflowers to help out the pollinators in the yard and give her garden the best chance to thrive(繁荣). At the end of the day, I was glad to have gotten my hands dirty with my mom, I learned a lot, and I felt that I had gotten closer to her.