Research reveals that quality after-school programs improve academic performance, decrease youth delinquency and other high-risk

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问题     Research reveals that quality after-school programs improve academic performance, decrease youth delinquency and other high-risk behaviors, and help young people grow into healthy, successful adults. The impact of quality after-school programs on academic performance is clear: Students who participate in such programs demonstrate improved behavior in school, better work habits, higher rates of homework completion, improved grades, and higher scores on achievement tests. They also have fewer absences and are less likely to be retained. After-school programs also impact high-risk teen behavior. Finally, after-school programs play a vital role in supporting the following realms of development: physical development, intellectual development, psychological and emotional health, and social development. Thus, one can make the case that after-school programming is an effective strategy to help young people become contributing members of society.
    Among the Boys is a unique after-school program for boys living in the Highland Park neighborhood of our city. The organizational task is to provide males living in low-income and public housing with opportunities to discover their ability to change challenges into possibilities. The program includes an academic part as well as specific strategies for supporting the overall development of the participants. Among the Boys uses painting as an instrument for helping boys examine their world, discuss it, and develop positive ways of handling the challenges they face daily. Young men present personal challenges to the group, such as a recent fight or the long-term drug abuse they observe in their neighborhood. After guided discussion, the youth work as a team, determining how to best represent the issue at hand in a painting. The resulting paintings and explanations of these paintings provided by the young people suggest that something profound occurs through this process. These young men are learning a healthy way to express and cope with the pain and suffering they feel. Art serves as a healing process and a structured method of teaching teamwork, nonviolent values, conflict handling and problem-solving skills.
    Many components of Among the Boys are consistent with the best practices in the prevention of high-risk behavior. First, community-based youth development programs are considered important parts of a comprehensive prevention strategy, particularly in high-risk neighborhoods. Second, compensatory education that targets at-risk youth for academic failure is also considered an effective prevention strategy. Third, interventions aimed at improving youth’s moral reasoning, social problem-solving, and thinking skills are reported to be effective strategies for reducing violence in high-risk populations, especially when carried out with elementary school-aged boys. Finally, Among the Boys has a modified tutoring component, considered an effective prevention tool. Tutoring is typically a one-to-one match between a tutor and a youth, but Among the Boys creates "group tutoring." It compensates for its high student-tutor ratio with quality and quantity of time, as the program meets after school, on Saturdays, and all day during the summer, and is staffed primarily by males, an unusual quality among educational programs.
    Among the Boys is a rare gem among grass-roots programs, and represents the vision of a successful male who grew up in the Highland Park neighborhood and has returned to make a valuable contribution to his community.  
The word "gem" underlined in Paragraph 4 is used to demonstrate something________.

选项 A、small and hard to see
B、valuable and unique
C、powerful and unexpected
D、delicate and expensive

答案B

解析 词义界定。gem一般指“宝石,精华”等,此处的上下文为a rare gem among grass-roots programs,即在众多计划中的一朵“奇葩”,那么选项B“有价值且独特的”符合语意。选项A强调微乎其微,选项c表示出乎意料的强大,选项D表示精致、贵重。它们均与语境意义相左。
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