（ 九）
【导读】当现实与我们的观念发生冲突时，我们是一意孤行，还是想法改变自己？
In 1974, after filling out fifty applications, going through four interviews, and winning one offer, I look what I could get — a teaching job at what I considered a distant wild area: western New Jersey. My characteristic optimism was alive only when I reminded myself that I would be doing what I had wanted to do since I was fourteen 一 teaching English.
School started, but I felt more and more as if I were in a foreign country. Was this rural area really New Jersey? My students a week off when hunting season began. I was told they were also frequently absent in late October to help their fathers make hay on the farms. I was a young woman from New York City, who thought that “Make hay while the sun shines” just meant to have a good time.
But, still, I was teaching English. I worked hard, taking time off only to eat and sleep. And then there was my sixth-grade class 一 seventeen boys and five girls who were only six years younger than me. I had a problem long before I knew it. I was struggling in my work as a young idealistic teacher. I wanted to make literature come alive and promote a love of the written word. The students wanted to throw spitballs and whisper dirty words in the back of the room.
