Child of the Year 2005
Tilly Smith, the 11-year-old British girl, who was called “Angel of the Beach”, saved 100 tourists from a Thai beach hit by the tsunami 1 on Dec. 26, 2004 and has been named Child of the Year 2005 by readers of a French children's newspaper.
She came ahead of a South African Aids orphan, a six-year-old girl who survived a kidnapping by paedophiles2 and a young Parisian pop singer to win the Mon Quotidien3 award.
She is unaware of her remarkable popularity among French children. Her picture appears on the front page of Mon Quotidien, which is read by 10~14-year-olds.
“Our readers chose Tilly because they could identify with her,”said Francois Dufour, the editor-in-chief. “To be a pop star at 11 seems impossible, and the idea of having Aids or being kidnapped is remote from their lives.”
Tilly's geographic lesson
Tilly Smith is a schoolgirl at Danes Hill School in Oxshott, Surrey, England. Back from Thailand she told her geography class how the sea slowly rose and started to foam, bubble, and form whirlpools4 before the big waves came.
“What Tilly described as happening was exactly the same as I'd shown on a video of a tsunami that hit the Hawaiian islands [in 1946],”said Andrew F. Kearney, Tilly's geography teacher. “She saw the consequences of not acting when something strange happens.” Kearney said topics for year-six pupils (age 10 to 11) include tectonic5 plates, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
“We covered tsunamis because they can be caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, or landslides6 ,”he added. “I've taught this particular course for at least 11 years.”
Kearney uses audiovisual7 teaching aids such as interactive white boards to harness8 geographic information online (his class often visits nationalgeographic.com). Tilly's class had looked up U.S. Web sites about tsunami early-warning9 systems.
“The teacher has a computer on the desk and can project different Web pages onto the whiteboard,” Kearney said. “It's helped make great strides in teaching geography—it really brings it into the classroom.”
Children are also given practical tasks. One of these was to build models of an earthquake-proof house out of balsa10 wood. “I put [the models] on a box and shake it to see which model remains intact the longest,” Kearney added.
“Any subject can be dull if it's taught that way,”he continued. “You've got to get the children involved and interested—that's the challenge. If they're just given a dusty old book and asked to answer some questions, then they're not going to learn much.”
Tsunami hero
On December 26,2004, British schoolgirl Tilly Smith, ten, saw “bubbling on the water...and foam sizzling11 just like in a frying pan” while walking on Phuket Island beach with her family. Her mind kept going back to the geography lesson Mr. Kearney gave just two weeks before she flew out to Thailand on vacation. She recognized these as the warning signs of a tsunami.
She told her parents and alerted the staff of the Marriott Hotel, where they were staying. The beach was evacuated12 just minutes before the killer tsunami struck; it was one of the few on Phuket where no one was killed or seriously hurt.
“The water was swelling13 and kept coming in,” recalled Penny Smith, Tilly's mother. “There was froth14 on it like you get on the top of a beer. The sea was like a millpond15 before [the swelling began].”
The Smiths, from southeast England, were celebrating Christmas at Maikhao Beach in Phuket, southern Thailand. Deadly tsunami waves were already on their way—triggered16 by a massive earthquake off northern Sumatra earlier that morning.
“The beach was getting smaller and smaller,” said Penny Smith, 43. “I felt compelled17 to look, but I didn't know what was happening. Then Tilly said she'd just studied this at school—she talked about tectonic plates and an earthquake under the sea. She got more and more hysterical18 . In the end she was screaming at us to get off the beach.”
Tilly's father, Colin Smith, 46, said other tourists on the beach were alerted by his daughter's concerns as he took Tilly and her seven-year-old sister back to the hotel swimming pool.
Penny Smith added, “I didn't know what a tsunami was, but seeing your daughter so frightened made you think something serious must be going on.”
The family took refuge19 on the third floor of their hotel. Set well back from the shore, it withstood the surge20 of three tsunami waves.
“Everything went in the swimming pool—beds, palm trees, the lot,” Penny Smith said. “Even if you hadn't drowned, you would have been hit by something.”If they had stayed on the beach, she believed they wouldn't have made it to safety.
2005年度风云儿童
蒂莉·史密斯，这个被誉为“海滩天使”的11岁英国女孩，在2004年12月26日的那场海啸中，曾让100多名游客从泰国的一个海滩上死里逃生。她也因此被法国一家儿童报的读者们评为“2005年度风云儿童”。
她的人气超过了另外两名候选儿童，从而获得了法国儿童报刊《我的日报》所颁发的年度奖。另外两名候选者：一名是6岁的南非艾滋病孤儿，这个女孩曾经成功逃脱了一恋童癖患者的绑架；另外一名是巴黎少年流行歌手。
她并不知道自己已经在法国儿童中声名远播，她的照片还登上了《我的日报》的头版，该报的读者为10~14岁的少年儿童。
“我们的读者之所以选她，是因为他们对她有一种认同感，” 《我的日报》总编弗朗索瓦·杜富尔说，“11岁就成为流行歌星似乎不太可能，而患艾滋病或遭绑架这些概念又离他们的生活太遥远。”
别开生面的地理课
蒂莉·史密斯就读于英国萨里郡奥克斯肖特的丹尼斯山学校。从泰国回来后，她在地理课上向同学们讲述了巨浪袭来之前海水是如何缓慢上涨、起白沫、冒水泡，并形成漩涡的整个过程。
“蒂莉所描述的情景同我以前给学生们放映过的（1946年）夏威夷海啸的录像一模一样。”蒂莉的地理老师安德鲁·F·卡尼说。“她从录像中看到了面对异常情况无动于衷的后果。”卡尼介绍说，6年级学生（10～11岁儿童）的学习内容包括地壳构造板块、地震以及火山。
“我们之所以把海啸纳入教学内容，是因为地震、火山喷发或山体滑坡都可能引发海啸，”他补充道，“我教这门特殊课程至少有11年了。”
卡尼借助诸如互动白色书写板等音像教学手段利用网上地理信息（他所教的班级经常访问《国家地理》网站—nationalgeographic.com）。蒂莉所在的班级就曾在美国网站上查询过有关海啸预警系统的内容。
“教师讲台上的电脑可以将不同的网页投影到白色书写板上，”卡尼说。“这种方法使地理教学向前迈了一大步——它把现实场景搬进了课堂。”
此外，还布置给孩子们一些动手作业，例如，用轻木做一个防震房屋的模型。“我将（模型）放在一个箱子上，然后开始摇晃箱子，看哪一个模型保持完好的时间最长。”卡尼接着说。
“若是照本宣科，任何课程都会枯燥乏味，”他继续说。“你得让孩子们参与进来并产生兴趣 —— 这就是挑战。如果仅仅是发给他们一本又脏又旧的课本，然后让他们回答几个问题，那他们就学不到多少知识。”
海啸英雄
2004年12月26日，10岁的英国女学生蒂莉·史密斯与家人一起在普吉岛海滩上散步，突然发现“海面在冒泡泡……而且泡沫在哧哧作响，就像在煎锅里似的”。她的脑海里不断浮现来泰国度假前两周卡尼先生上的地理课。她意识到这些都是海啸的预警信号。
她把一切告诉父母，并向他们住宿的万豪酒店工作人员发出警告。就在致命海啸到来前几分钟，海滩上的游客被疏散了；这一海滩是普吉岛上仅有的几个没有重大伤亡的海滩之一。
“海水在上涨，不停地往上涌”，蒂莉的母亲彭妮·史密斯回忆说，“水面上还有白色的泡沫，人们好像站在啤酒的上面。在水面开始上升之前，大海就像一个磨坊的水池。”
来自英国东南部的史密斯一家当时正在泰国南部的普吉岛麦考海滩过圣诞节。与此同时，致命的海啸巨浪也已踏上了征程 —— 这些巨浪是由当天清晨发生在苏门答腊以北海域的大地震所引发的。
“海滩变得越来越小，”43岁的彭妮·史密斯说。“我忍不住要看，但并不明白到底出了什么事。然后，蒂莉说她刚在学校学过这个—— 她谈到了地壳构造板块和海底地震。她变得越来越歇斯底里。最后，她尖叫着让我们离开海滩。”蒂莉的父亲，46岁的柯林·史密斯说，他带蒂莉和她7岁的妹妹回旅馆游泳池后，在他女儿惊恐情绪的感染下，海滩上的其他游客也变得警觉起来。
彭妮·史密斯又说，“我不知道海啸是什么，但只要看看女儿如此惊慌，就想一定是要出大事了。”
史密斯一家藏身在旅馆的4楼。由于旅馆远离海滩，它经受住了海啸巨浪的3次冲击。
“所有的东西都卷进了游泳池 —— 床、棕榈树等等。”彭妮·史密斯说。“即使你没淹死，也会被东西砸中。”她相信，要是他们不离开海滩，一定无法脱险。