One Bite at a Time

Stephen was on campus to register when I first met him.

One summer day when I was heading for the administration building, I heard someone call my name. I ________ around and saw Philip, one of my colleagues standing with another young man. As Philip introduced me to the young man, named Stephen, he reminded him that he would be taking one of my classes, Introduction to Literature. With a somewhat ________ expression, Stephen asked if my class was going to be “hard”. Would he be able to pass? I ________ he was concerned about failing before the opening day of classes. We talked about what the class would ________ and I saw Stephen’s eyes getting big with fear.

Then I remembered a bit of classical dialog:

Question: “How do you eat an elephant?”

Answer: “One bite at a time.”

I told him to ________ his work that way. To do his assignment, all of them, and to get them in on time. I added that most successful students I knew made a timetable of all the assignment so they could plan their workload.

As time went on, I learned more of Stephen’s story. He had ________ in middle school. It had taken him longer to finish than most young people. Family members, including his mother, kept reminding him that he was a failure. Now, in the face of their negative-saying he had been admitted into college. He told me that before coming to our campus no one had believed he had much ________.

Stephen didn’t become an “A” student. He didn’t make any honor rolls. Still, he managed to pass most of his courses by being in class every day, turning in all of his assignment on time and breaking down his studying into ________ digestible parts. By passing course after course he began to gain a measure of self-respect. He was a great singer and he was on the school’s cross-country team.

Every time I saw him on campus, he would brighten up and say, “One bite at a time.” Whenever he introduced me to his friends, he would tell them that he was ________ when he was supposed to be failing. His secret, he said, was that he was ________ what I taught him before classes ever started: “Take it one bite at a time.”

We find that bright children are rarely held back by mixed-ability teaching. _________, both their knowledge and experience are enriched. We feel that there are many _________ in streaming (把儿童分成年龄相当的小组) pupils. It does not take into _________ the fact that children develop at different rates. It can have a bad effect on both the bright and the not-so-bright child. After all, it can be quite _________ to be at the bottom of the top grade!

Besides, it is rather unreal to grade people just according to their _________. This is only one aspect of their _________ personality. We are concerned to develop the abilities of all our pupils to the full, not just their academic ability. We also _________ personal qualities and social skills, and we find that mixed-ability teaching _________ all these aspects of learning.

In our classrooms, we work in various ways. The pupils often work in _________: this gives them the opportunity to learn to cooperate, to share, and to develop leadership skills. They also learn how to cope with personal problems as well as learning how to think, to make decisions, to __________ and evaluate, and to communicate __________.

Sometimes the pupils work in pairs; sometimes they work on __________ tasks and assignments, and they can do this at their own speed. They also have some __________ class teaching when it is necessary. We encourage our pupils to use the library, and we teach them the skills they need in order to do this __________. An advanced pupil can do advanced work; it does not __________ what age the child is. We expect our pupils to do their best, not their least, and we give them every encouragement to achieve this goal.