Jessica Westervelt,a Spanish teacher at Bethlehem High School in New York,created an activity called “House Hunters”,which was inspired by the popular television show “House Hunters International”,for her Spanish class about four years ago.

Similar to the show,students work in groups,pretending to be real house agents,and look for three houses in Spanish-speaking countries.She uses the activity to teach vocabulary related to the home,chores,travel and vacation.She created the exercise because she wanted to incorporate her students’ interests into the curriculum.At the time,a group of her students were big fans of the show.

The students look for a house for Westervelt to buy to live in,or rent for vacation.She tells them what she is looking for in a home and gives them a budget.Students work in groups of three,and each student is responsible for finding one house in a Spanish-speaking country that fits the requirements.

The groups usually make a brochure describing the houses they find.Each group presents their findings to the class,while the other students take notes.The entire activity is done in Spanish,so students get to practice their writing,listening and conversation skills.They also get some cultural education when researching homes in Spanish-speaking countries.Westervelt says that students planning to take the class look forward to her project.

Westervelt says,“I think any time that you can find a way to link into something that they are interested in outside of school,it makes it more realistic for them and it makes that activity much more enjoyable for them.”

When Peter Fortune was ten years old grown-up people sometimes used to tell him he was a “difficult” child. He never understood what they meant. He didn’t feel difficult at all. He didn’t throw milk bottles at the garden wall, or tip tomato ketchup over his head and pretend it was blood, or slash at his granny’s ankle with his sword, though he occasionally thought of these things. Apart from all vegetables except potatoes, and fish, eggs and cheese, there was nothing he would not eat. He wasn’t noisier or dirtier or more stupid than anyone he knew. His name was easy to say and spell. His face, which was pale and freckled, was easy enough to remember. He went to school every day like all other children and never made that much fuss about it. He was only as offensive to his sister as she was to him. Policemen never came knocking at the front door wanting to arrest him. Doctors in white coats never offered to take him away to the madhouse. As far as Peter was concerned, he was really quite easy. What was difficult about him?

It was not until he had been a grown-up himself for many years that Peter finally understood. They thought he was difficult because he was so silent. That seemed to bother people. The other problem was he liked being by himself. ① Not all the time, of course. Not even every day. But most days he liked to go off somewhere for an hour to his bedroom, or the park. He liked to be alone and think his thoughts.

Now, grown-ups like to think they know what’s going on inside a ten-year-old’s head. And it’s impossible to know what someone is thinking if they keep quiet about it. People would see Peter lying on his back on a summer’s afternoon, chewing a piece of grass and staring at the sky. “Peter, Peter! What are you thinking about?” they would call to him. And Peter would sit up with a start. “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.” Grown-ups knew that something was going on inside that head, but they couldn’t hear it or see it or feel it. They couldn’t tell Peter to stop it, because they did not know what it was he was doing in there. ② He could have been setting his school on fire or feeding his sister to an alligator and escaping in a hot air balloon, but all they saw was a boy staring at the blue sky without blinking, a boy who did not hear you when you called his name.

As for being on his own, grown-ups didn’t much like that either. They don’t even like other grown-ups being on their own. When you join in, people can see what you’re up to. You’re up to what they’re up to. ③ Peter had different ideas. In fact, he thought, if people spent less time joining in and making others join in, and spent a little time each day alone remembering who they were or who they might be, then the world would be a happier place and wars might never happen...

The trouble with being a daydreamer who doesn’t say much is that the teachers at school, especially the ones who don’t know you very well, are likely to think you are rather stupid. ④ Or, if not stupid, then dull. No one can see the amazing things that are going on in your head. A teacher who saw Peter staring out the window or at a blank sheet of paper on his desk might think that he was bored, or stuck for an answer. But the truth was quite different.

Covid-19 vaccines are starting to roll out in several countries, a momentous breakthrough that hopefully signals a light at the end of this dark pandemic. For Katalin Karikó, the moment is particularly special.

Karikó has spent decades of her career researching the therapeutic(治疗的)possibilities of mRNA, a component of DNA that is considered to be one of the main building blocks of life. Through multiple setbacks, job losses, doubt and transatlantic move, Karikó stood by her conviction(信念): That mRNA could be used for something truly groundbreaking. Now, that work is the basis of the Covid-19 vaccine.

From Hungary to the US

Karikó, 65, began her career in her native Hungary in the 1970s, when mRNA research was new and the possibilities seemed endless. But the call of the American dream(and more researching and funding opportunities)took root.

In 1985, she and her husband and young daughter left Hungary for the US after she got an invitation from Temple University in Philadelphia. They sold their car, Karikó told The Guardian, and stuffed the money—an equivalent of about $1, 200—in their daughter’s teddy bear for safekeeping.

“We had just moved into our new apartment, our daughter was 2 years old, everything was so good, we were happy,” Karikó told the Hungarian news site G7 of her family’s departure “But we had to go.”

She continued her research at Temple, and then at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. But by then, the bloom was off the rose of mRNA research, and Karikó’s idea that it could be used to fight disease was considered too radical, too financially risky to fund. She applied for grant(拨款)after grant, but kept getting rejections, and in 1995, she was demoted(降级)from her position at UPenn. She also was diagnosed with cancer around the same time.

“Usually, at that point, people just say goodbye and leave because it’s so horrible,” she told Stat, a health news, in November. “I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else. I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough.”

From doubt to breakthrough

But she stuck with it.

Eventually, Karikó and her former colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, Drew Weissman, developed a method of utilizing synthetic mRNA to fight disease that involves changing the way the body produces virus-fighting material, she explained to CNN’s.

That discovery is now the basis of the Covid-19 vaccine, and some have said both Weissman and Karikó, now a senior vice president of the Germany-based BioNTech, deserve a Nobel Prize.

“If anyone asks me whom to vote for some day down the line, I would put them front and center,” Derek Rossi, one of the founders of pharmaceutical giant Moderna, told Stat. “That fundamental discovery is going to go into medicines that help the world.”

While recognition, after all of this time, must be nice, Karikó says scientific glory isn’t what’s on her mind right now.

“Really, we will celebrate when this human suffering is over, when the hardship and all of this terrible time will end, and hopefully in the summer when we will forget about virus and vaccine. And then I will be really celebrating,” she told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

Karikó said she plans to get the vaccine soon, along with Weissman, and she said she’s “very, very confident” it will work. After all, it was their discoveries that contributed to it.

In the meantime, Karikó said she allowed herself a little treat to celebrate the vaccine news: a bag of Goobers, her favorite candy.