Questões de Inglês

Lessons in despair and broken dreams

 

1 I have been a teacher for eight years but I don’t spend much of my time actually teaching any more. These days my job is more as a social worker to the most vulnerable children from the toughest homes. I spend my days running a team of people within the school who handle the most difficult and most vulnerable kids.

2 There are 1,500 pupils, mostly from white working-class families and large numbers from one of the most socially deprived areas in the country. About half the families are living on benefits and most of the parents whose kids get into trouble have alcohol problems.

 

ESCAPE

 

3 For some kids, school is where they come to escape from home. Most of the pupils will be vulnerable because their parents are alcoholic or they’re in foster care. If they do well, get good grades or win on sports day, their parents couldn’t care less. They’re not interested. They don’t see the point of school. These people just have children without any thought. When they become a nuisance they leave them to fend for themselves. That breaks your heart. We have to pick some pupils up from home just to make sure they arrive at school to sit their GCSEs. When you turn up at the family home the parents are often still asleep after a night drinking. We knock on the door, get them up and take them to school so they don’t miss the exams. Some of the parents aren’t allowed to come into the school at all. We have a list of about 10 parents who are banned from the premises because they would come to the school and abuse the teachers, usually only verbally. However once or twice I’ve thought: “This might end up with me lying in a pool of blood.”

 

BAD DADS

 

4 Typically, the children I look after will have to get up by themselves in the morning. Most of them don’t eat a proper healthy breakfast, they just have something like a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar on the way to school and then have chips for tea.

5 When parents have no interest in education and don’t see any purpose in it, it can be a struggle. Once there was a dad who was angry with us about a GCSE exam that lasted until 4pm. School  usually finishes at 3pm and he wanted his son home at the usual time. We tried to explain that it was a national exam but he wanted his son home to get his cigarrets from the newsagents.

 

MOBILE

 

6 We had a girl of 15 with an alcoholic mother who often got drunk and brought any man she’d met in the pub back home. The girl’s older sister got pregnant when she was 15 so we considered her a high risk. We gave her a mobile phone with the single condition that she always answered when the school or her teachers called. A fortnight after we gave it to her, she sold it for beer and cigarettes and two weeks later she was pregnant. It’s so disheartening.

 

HOPE?

 

7 It might seem surprising but some of the pupils from the most damaged homes can be the most committed.

8 They do surprisingly well in school because when things are really bad, when you’re the one getting breakfast for yourself up in the morning, getting breakfast for yourself and your younger brothers and sisters and turning up in time for registration with your homework done, then you have to have a much greater commitment than students in ordinary, loving homes. We had a girl of 15 who was being systematically beaten by her alcoholic father. She moved in with her grandmother and grandfather but then they threw her out.

9 We helped her to get a foster placement so she could continue at school but it was a very long way from school and her friends.

10 She had to take four buses to get to school every morning but she finished her CGSEs, went into the sixth form and now she’s going to university and wants to work in social services. She’s one of the positive stories but they can be few and far between. I had one boy who was a horrible, really unpleasant character. He’s now beating his girlfriend and although he hasn’t got children he probably soon will have, so he’ll be in the next group of parents causing problems. It’s a vicious cycle.

 

Glossary:

CGSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) é uma prova que os estudantes britânicos prestam aos 16 anos, ou seja, no final da escola obrigatória).

(FONTE: Speak Up Magazine issue #303, 2012)

 

Pick up, turn up, end up are examples of

Lessons in despair and broken dreams

 

1 I have been a teacher for eight years but I don’t spend much of my time actually teaching any more. These days my job is more as a social worker to the most vulnerable children from the toughest homes. I spend my days running a team of people within the school who handle the most difficult and most vulnerable kids.

2 There are 1,500 pupils, mostly from white working-class families and large numbers from one of the most socially deprived areas in the country. About half the families are living on benefits and most of the parents whose kids get into trouble have alcohol problems.

 

ESCAPE

 

3 For some kids, school is where they come to escape from home. Most of the pupils will be vulnerable because their parents are alcoholic or they’re in foster care. If they do well, get good grades or win on sports day, their parents couldn’t care less. They’re not interested. They don’t see the point of school. These people just have children without any thought. When they become a nuisance they leave them to fend for themselves. That breaks your heart. We have to pick some pupils up from home just to make sure they arrive at school to sit their GCSEs. When you turn up at the family home the parents are often still asleep after a night drinking. We knock on the door, get them up and take them to school so they don’t miss the exams. Some of the parents aren’t allowed to come into the school at all. We have a list of about 10 parents who are banned from the premises because they would come to the school and abuse the teachers, usually only verbally. However once or twice I’ve thought: “This might end up with me lying in a pool of blood.”

 

BAD DADS

 

4 Typically, the children I look after will have to get up by themselves in the morning. Most of them don’t eat a proper healthy breakfast, they just have something like a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar on the way to school and then have chips for tea.

5 When parents have no interest in education and don’t see any purpose in it, it can be a struggle. Once there was a dad who was angry with us about a GCSE exam that lasted until 4pm. School  usually finishes at 3pm and he wanted his son home at the usual time. We tried to explain that it was a national exam but he wanted his son home to get his cigarrets from the newsagents.

 

MOBILE

 

6 We had a girl of 15 with an alcoholic mother who often got drunk and brought any man she’d met in the pub back home. The girl’s older sister got pregnant when she was 15 so we considered her a high risk. We gave her a mobile phone with the single condition that she always answered when the school or her teachers called. A fortnight after we gave it to her, she sold it for beer and cigarettes and two weeks later she was pregnant. It’s so disheartening.

 

HOPE?

 

7 It might seem surprising but some of the pupils from the most damaged homes can be the most committed.

8 They do surprisingly well in school because when things are really bad, when you’re the one getting breakfast for yourself up in the morning, getting breakfast for yourself and your younger brothers and sisters and turning up in time for registration with your homework done, then you have to have a much greater commitment than students in ordinary, loving homes. We had a girl of 15 who was being systematically beaten by her alcoholic father. She moved in with her grandmother and grandfather but then they threw her out.

9 We helped her to get a foster placement so she could continue at school but it was a very long way from school and her friends.

10 She had to take four buses to get to school every morning but she finished her CGSEs, went into the sixth form and now she’s going to university and wants to work in social services. She’s one of the positive stories but they can be few and far between. I had one boy who was a horrible, really unpleasant character. He’s now beating his girlfriend and although he hasn’t got children he probably soon will have, so he’ll be in the next group of parents causing problems. It’s a vicious cycle.

 

Glossary:

CGSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) é uma prova que os estudantes britânicos prestam aos 16 anos, ou seja, no final da escola obrigatória).

(FONTE: Speak Up Magazine issue #303, 2012)

 

According to the text, home, for some kids, is

Lessons in despair and broken dreams

 

1 I have been a teacher for eight years but I don’t spend much of my time actually teaching any more. These days my job is more as a social worker to the most vulnerable children from the toughest homes. I spend my days running a team of people within the school who handle the most difficult and most vulnerable kids.

2 There are 1,500 pupils, mostly from white working-class families and large numbers from one of the most socially deprived areas in the country. About half the families are living on benefits and most of the parents whose kids get into trouble have alcohol problems.

 

ESCAPE

 

3 For some kids, school is where they come to escape from home. Most of the pupils will be vulnerable because their parents are alcoholic or they’re in foster care. If they do well, get good grades or win on sports day, their parents couldn’t care less. They’re not interested. They don’t see the point of school. These people just have children without any thought. When they become a nuisance they leave them to fend for themselves. That breaks your heart. We have to pick some pupils up from home just to make sure they arrive at school to sit their GCSEs. When you turn up at the family home the parents are often still asleep after a night drinking. We knock on the door, get them up and take them to school so they don’t miss the exams. Some of the parents aren’t allowed to come into the school at all. We have a list of about 10 parents who are banned from the premises because they would come to the school and abuse the teachers, usually only verbally. However once or twice I’ve thought: “This might end up with me lying in a pool of blood.”

 

BAD DADS

 

4 Typically, the children I look after will have to get up by themselves in the morning. Most of them don’t eat a proper healthy breakfast, they just have something like a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar on the way to school and then have chips for tea.

5 When parents have no interest in education and don’t see any purpose in it, it can be a struggle. Once there was a dad who was angry with us about a GCSE exam that lasted until 4pm. School  usually finishes at 3pm and he wanted his son home at the usual time. We tried to explain that it was a national exam but he wanted his son home to get his cigarrets from the newsagents.

 

MOBILE

 

6 We had a girl of 15 with an alcoholic mother who often got drunk and brought any man she’d met in the pub back home. The girl’s older sister got pregnant when she was 15 so we considered her a high risk. We gave her a mobile phone with the single condition that she always answered when the school or her teachers called. A fortnight after we gave it to her, she sold it for beer and cigarettes and two weeks later she was pregnant. It’s so disheartening.

 

HOPE?

 

7 It might seem surprising but some of the pupils from the most damaged homes can be the most committed.

8 They do surprisingly well in school because when things are really bad, when you’re the one getting breakfast for yourself up in the morning, getting breakfast for yourself and your younger brothers and sisters and turning up in time for registration with your homework done, then you have to have a much greater commitment than students in ordinary, loving homes. We had a girl of 15 who was being systematically beaten by her alcoholic father. She moved in with her grandmother and grandfather but then they threw her out.

9 We helped her to get a foster placement so she could continue at school but it was a very long way from school and her friends.

10 She had to take four buses to get to school every morning but she finished her CGSEs, went into the sixth form and now she’s going to university and wants to work in social services. She’s one of the positive stories but they can be few and far between. I had one boy who was a horrible, really unpleasant character. He’s now beating his girlfriend and although he hasn’t got children he probably soon will have, so he’ll be in the next group of parents causing problems. It’s a vicious cycle.

 

Glossary:

CGSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) é uma prova que os estudantes britânicos prestam aos 16 anos, ou seja, no final da escola obrigatória).

(FONTE: Speak Up Magazine issue #303, 2012)

 

They (the parents) don’t see the point of school.

The sentence means that

Lessons in despair and broken dreams

 

1 I have been a teacher for eight years but I don’t spend much of my time actually teaching any more. These days my job is more as a social worker to the most vulnerable children from the toughest homes. I spend my days running a team of people within the school who handle the most difficult and most vulnerable kids.

2 There are 1,500 pupils, mostly from white working-class families and large numbers from one of the most socially deprived areas in the country. About half the families are living on benefits and most of the parents whose kids get into trouble have alcohol problems.

 

ESCAPE

 

3 For some kids, school is where they come to escape from home. Most of the pupils will be vulnerable because their parents are alcoholic or they’re in foster care. If they do well, get good grades or win on sports day, their parents couldn’t care less. They’re not interested. They don’t see the point of school. These people just have children without any thought. When they become a nuisance they leave them to fend for themselves. That breaks your heart. We have to pick some pupils up from home just to make sure they arrive at school to sit their GCSEs. When you turn up at the family home the parents are often still asleep after a night drinking. We knock on the door, get them up and take them to school so they don’t miss the exams. Some of the parents aren’t allowed to come into the school at all. We have a list of about 10 parents who are banned from the premises because they would come to the school and abuse the teachers, usually only verbally. However once or twice I’ve thought: “This might end up with me lying in a pool of blood.”

 

BAD DADS

 

4 Typically, the children I look after will have to get up by themselves in the morning. Most of them don’t eat a proper healthy breakfast, they just have something like a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar on the way to school and then have chips for tea.

5 When parents have no interest in education and don’t see any purpose in it, it can be a struggle. Once there was a dad who was angry with us about a GCSE exam that lasted until 4pm. School  usually finishes at 3pm and he wanted his son home at the usual time. We tried to explain that it was a national exam but he wanted his son home to get his cigarrets from the newsagents.

 

MOBILE

 

6 We had a girl of 15 with an alcoholic mother who often got drunk and brought any man she’d met in the pub back home. The girl’s older sister got pregnant when she was 15 so we considered her a high risk. We gave her a mobile phone with the single condition that she always answered when the school or her teachers called. A fortnight after we gave it to her, she sold it for beer and cigarettes and two weeks later she was pregnant. It’s so disheartening.

 

HOPE?

 

7 It might seem surprising but some of the pupils from the most damaged homes can be the most committed.

8 They do surprisingly well in school because when things are really bad, when you’re the one getting breakfast for yourself up in the morning, getting breakfast for yourself and your younger brothers and sisters and turning up in time for registration with your homework done, then you have to have a much greater commitment than students in ordinary, loving homes. We had a girl of 15 who was being systematically beaten by her alcoholic father. She moved in with her grandmother and grandfather but then they threw her out.

9 We helped her to get a foster placement so she could continue at school but it was a very long way from school and her friends.

10 She had to take four buses to get to school every morning but she finished her CGSEs, went into the sixth form and now she’s going to university and wants to work in social services. She’s one of the positive stories but they can be few and far between. I had one boy who was a horrible, really unpleasant character. He’s now beating his girlfriend and although he hasn’t got children he probably soon will have, so he’ll be in the next group of parents causing problems. It’s a vicious cycle.

 

Glossary:

CGSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) é uma prova que os estudantes britânicos prestam aos 16 anos, ou seja, no final da escola obrigatória).

(FONTE: Speak Up Magazine issue #303, 2012)

 

“These days my job is more as a social worker to the most vulnerable children from the toughest homes.”

A expressão sublinhada refere-se a:

New Approach To Improving Treatment For

Multiple Sclerosis And Other Conditions

Main Category: Multiple Sclerosis

Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience

Article Date: 21 May 2013 - 0:00 PDT

 

Working with lab mice models of multiple sclerosis (MS), UC Davis scientists have detected a novel molecular target for the design of drugs that could be safer and more effective than current FDA-approved medications against MS.

The findings of the research study, published online in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, could have therapeutic applications for MS as well as cerebral palsy and leukodystrophies, all disorders associated with loss of white matter, which is the brain tissue that carries information between nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

The target, a protein referred to as mitochondrial translocator protein (TSPO), had been previously identified but not linked to MS, an autoimmune disease that strips the protective fatty coating off nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord. The mitrochronical TSPO is located on the outer surface of mitochondria, cellular structures that supply energy to the cells. Damage to the fatty coating, or myelin, slows the transmission of the nerve signals that enable body movement as well as sensory and cognitive functioning.

The scientists identified mitochondrial TSPO as a potential therapeutic target when mice that had symptoms of MS improved after being treated with the anti-anxiety drug etifoxine, which interacts with mitochondrial TSPO. When etifoxine, a drug clinically available in Europe, was administered to the MS mice before they had clinical signs of disease, the severity of the disease was reduced when compared to the untreated lab animals. When treated at the peak of disease severity, the animals' MS symptoms improved.

"Etifoxine has a novel protective effect against the loss of the sheath that insulates the nerve fibers that transmit the signals from brain cells," said Wenbin Deng, principal investigator of the study and associate professor of biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis.

"Our discovery of etifoxine's effects on an MS animal model suggests that mitochondrial TSPO represents a potential therapeutic target for MS drug development," said Deng.

"Drugs designed to more precisely bind to mitochondrial TSPO may help repair the myelin sheath of MS patients and thereby even help restore the transmission of signals in the central nervous system that enable normal motor, sensory and cognitive functions," he said.

Deng added that better treatments for MS and other demyelinating diseases are needed, especially since current FDA-approved therapies do not repair the damage of immune attacks on the myelin sheath.

The UC Davis research team hopes to further investigate the therapeutic applications of mitochondrial TSPO in drug development for MS and other autoimmune diseases. To identify more efficacious and safer drug candidates, they plan to pursue research grants that will enable them to test a variety of pharmacological compounds that bind to mitochondrial TSPO and other molecular targets in experimental models of MS and other myelin diseases.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/260722.php

According to the article, the tissue that carries information between brain nerve cells and the spinal cord is called

New Approach To Improving Treatment For

Multiple Sclerosis And Other Conditions

Main Category: Multiple Sclerosis

Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience

Article Date: 21 May 2013 - 0:00 PDT

 

Working with lab mice models of multiple sclerosis (MS), UC Davis scientists have detected a novel molecular target for the design of drugs that could be safer and more effective than current FDA-approved medications against MS.

The findings of the research study, published online in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, could have therapeutic applications for MS as well as cerebral palsy and leukodystrophies, all disorders associated with loss of white matter, which is the brain tissue that carries information between nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

The target, a protein referred to as mitochondrial translocator protein (TSPO), had been previously identified but not linked to MS, an autoimmune disease that strips the protective fatty coating off nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord. The mitrochronical TSPO is located on the outer surface of mitochondria, cellular structures that supply energy to the cells. Damage to the fatty coating, or myelin, slows the transmission of the nerve signals that enable body movement as well as sensory and cognitive functioning.

The scientists identified mitochondrial TSPO as a potential therapeutic target when mice that had symptoms of MS improved after being treated with the anti-anxiety drug etifoxine, which interacts with mitochondrial TSPO. When etifoxine, a drug clinically available in Europe, was administered to the MS mice before they had clinical signs of disease, the severity of the disease was reduced when compared to the untreated lab animals. When treated at the peak of disease severity, the animals' MS symptoms improved.

"Etifoxine has a novel protective effect against the loss of the sheath that insulates the nerve fibers that transmit the signals from brain cells," said Wenbin Deng, principal investigator of the study and associate professor of biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis.

"Our discovery of etifoxine's effects on an MS animal model suggests that mitochondrial TSPO represents a potential therapeutic target for MS drug development," said Deng.

"Drugs designed to more precisely bind to mitochondrial TSPO may help repair the myelin sheath of MS patients and thereby even help restore the transmission of signals in the central nervous system that enable normal motor, sensory and cognitive functions," he said.

Deng added that better treatments for MS and other demyelinating diseases are needed, especially since current FDA-approved therapies do not repair the damage of immune attacks on the myelin sheath.

The UC Davis research team hopes to further investigate the therapeutic applications of mitochondrial TSPO in drug development for MS and other autoimmune diseases. To identify more efficacious and safer drug candidates, they plan to pursue research grants that will enable them to test a variety of pharmacological compounds that bind to mitochondrial TSPO and other molecular targets in experimental models of MS and other myelin diseases.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/260722.php

As we see in the article, the researcher scientists use for their experiments