许国璋电视英语教学第二册
《第五课》
（一）课文：
1)课文原文：
A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER
Mrs. Cox teaches English in a high school in San Francisco, a big city on the West Coast of the United States. She had wanted to become a teacher when she was young.
She has taught eight years now and always enjoyed her work.
A school day at Mrs. Cox’s high school is divided into six periods of one hour each.
Mrs. Cox teaches five of these six periods. During her “free “ period from 2 to 3 pm. Mrs.
Cox has to meet with parents, order supplies, make out examinations, check assignments, and take care of many other things. So Mrs. Cox works steadily from the time she arrives
at school in the morning until she leaves for home late in the afternoon, and her “free”
periods isn’t really free at all.
An English teacher usually divides her time among three subjects: language (grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. ), composition, and literature. Mrs. Cox’s favorite subject is
literature, and her most exciting classes are those on the literature of Black Americans.
For Mrs. Cox, like most of the students in her school, is Black.
In her sixth period today, Mrs. Cox taught a poem by a well-known Black writer in the United States. She wrote the poem on the blackboard and read it aloud.
No sooner had she finished reading the poem than student’s questions began pouring in. One boy said the poem was heartbreakingly sad. Another student, a girl, said
she had read a book by the same writer, but she wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as her
mother did, and she didn’t know why. A third, a keen viewer of TV theatre, recognized a
phrase in the poem which had been used as the title of a recent play.
As she answered the questions, Mrs. Cox made sure that her students understood every line of the poem. She asked them to discuss if the poem contained any message.
The discussion became so lively that no one wanted to stop when the bell rang. Some
said there was no message, some said there was, some said it didn’t really matter, and
the class ended at that.
As she drove home, Mrs. Cox thought about the class she had just left. Today she could feel good about what she had accomplished as a teacher. Not one of her students
looked bored. Every one of them seemed interested in the poem. Once they started to
talk, they forgot about the time. She did not have to make them learn; she only had to
answer their questions and to guide the discussion. This, she thought to herself, is what
teaching is all about!
