The story of a U50 teacher who won the top prize in the excellent homeroom teacher exam in Nghe An

"Hot" determination

In the summer of 2021, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong was encouraged by the school principal to take the exam.good homeroom teacherProvincial level for primary education. This is the first time Nghe An education sector has implemented this competition, but Dien Chau education sector has organized it for more than5 years ago. At that time, the epidemic was complicated and teacher Nguyen Thi Luong had not yet imagined the difficulties of this school year. But with experience from the district-level competition for excellent homeroom teachers, she did not hesitate to nod. From then on, until the official competition took place, she had nearly 8 months to prepare and that was also a "plenty" of time for her to nurture many ideas for her exam.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong at the Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition. Photo: MH

After 10 years, the provincial excellent teacher competition for homeroom teachers is also the second launch of teacher Nguyen Thi Luong. Having already had achievements, when returning to this competition, some of her colleagues also wondered, asking her if she was not afraid of "hard work", if she failed, she might have to start over. On the contrary, since deciding to participate in this competition, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong felt "boiling", "hot inside" and a feeling that is very difficult to define. But more than anything, she wanted to use this competition to test herself and be able to participate in a new playground with colleagues across the province.

With such a point of view, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong entered the provincial competition for excellent homeroom teachers with a confident and quite relaxed spirit. With more than 25 years of experience standing on the podium, she also devoted all her heart to this competition and devoted all her heart to coming up with ideas, building content and coming up with many situations to implement the lessons. In the two parts of the provincial competition for excellent teachers, she also said that the part on Measures to improve the quality of homeroom work was considered "easy" because teachers had time to prepare in advance. But this was the part she spent a lot of time to implement from her own teaching experience.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong has more than 20 years of dedication to the education sector. Photo: MH

I chose the topic "Building qualities and promoting students' initiative through Collective Education" because this is one of two extracurricular lessons at school.

However, for many different reasons, currently in many schools we have not really focused on innovating teaching methods, only teaching perfunctorily and superficially, so Collective Education lessons become dry, repetitive, the organization is monotonous, boring, and uninteresting to students because they are not able to organize and participate in collective education hours together.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong

Another limitation of collective education sessions (class activities) is that the content of the activities is monotonous, often focusing on commenting and evaluating the activities of the week. Meanwhile, students lack thematic activities that give them the opportunity to demonstrate their talents, expand and consolidate their knowledge, practice necessary life skills and develop their qualities and competencies.

With the same situation, in her presentation, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong has built collective education lessons according to each topic and theme of each week and each month. During the implementation process, she chooses the content and form of teaching organization suitable for each lesson to create conditions for students to have the opportunity to participate in the experience.

In addition, students can also participate in art performances, quizzes, painting competitions, folk games such as hopscotch, chopsticks, dragon and snake, bamboo dancing, etc. to create excitement and actively participate in learning activities. Through teaching and learning activities, qualities and competencies are formed, students' positivity is maximized and the weekend activities are turned into interesting extracurricular activities.

Her lessons always bring excitement to her students. Photo: MH

Moving on to the second round of the competition with the implementation of a lesson with the theme "Living to Love". Sharing about this, she added: Organizing lessons by topic and theme is still often organized in schools, but in the past, the topics were often associated with holidays and cultural and social events. Meanwhile, the topic that I drew was quite abstract and required teachers to highlight the issue and have activities to help students see the meaning of the lesson's topic.

In the second round, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong shared that she encountered some difficulties because from the time of drawing the topic to the time of organizing the official lesson, she only had more than 1 day to prepare and get acquainted with the students at Dien Thinh Primary School.

At that time, students in the districtDien ChauHaving just returned to in-person school after many months of online learning, many students are still not used to the routine. Not to mention, this is also a lesson where teachers have to apply many skills, in addition to expertise, they also have to manage the class in the context of the class teaching online but still having to livestream for5 other F0 students are having to study via zoom from home.

During the teaching process, what makes her happy is that from a clip that she shares about daily stories in her family, students feel the love and sharing, and from there she can easily wrap up the problem and help them fully feel the topic "Living is to love". Even happier is that during the teaching process, there was a time when the signal transmission from the computer was unstable, but she promptly handled it and helped students, even at home, still feel a lively and exciting lesson and they can participate fully like all their classmates in the class.

Trust and devotion to the profession

After these two important exams, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong fell ill and received the “high score” while she was still recovering at home. At first, she did not believe the result of “valedictorian” because she knew that compared to many young colleagues, teachers in their 50s like her could not avoid falling behind. Meanwhile, compared to many other older colleagues, she might still be inferior in experience and life experiences.

Love for the job helps the couple overcome all difficulties. Photo: MH

The award has given her a great motivation and this has further strengthened her faith in her profession, in the simple work of "knocking children's heads" at the village school. Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong also said that she and her husband both graduated from the Mountainous Pedagogical School and started working at Dien Yen Primary School in 1999. In the early days, the life of the young teacher couple encountered many difficulties because of the distance and small children.

Meanwhile, it took her and her husband nearly 10 years to get into the payroll and in the early days the salary was only 200,000 - 500,000 VND/month. It is worth mentioning that despite the many difficulties, during that long time to get into the official position, she and her husband never thought about changing careers or taking on another job because they simply "just want to devote all their passion to the profession and all their love to their students".

From a young teacher who had just graduated from school, after more than 25 years of working at Dien Yen Primary School, teacher Nguyen Thi Luong has increasingly asserted herself both in her professional work and in other activities. In addition to the title of excellent teacher of the district and the province, she has also been awarded many titles such as Certificates of Merit from the Provincial People's Committee, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor, and grassroots emulation fighter. In 2020, she was also honored to participate in the typical advanced model of the education and training sector for the period 2015 - 2020. At school, she is also a teacher who is loved and respected by colleagues, and trusted by parents and students.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong also confided: After more than 20 years of working, the thing that makes me happiest is being loved and admired by the local people. There are generations of students who, even though they are far away, still remember their homeroom teacher on holidays. The love of the people has kept me with this school and helped me achieve the success I have today.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong and her students' class. Photo: MH.

During more than two decades of teaching, Ms. Nguyen Thi Luong has spent most of her time as a homeroom teacher. For her, this is a very special job because in addition to imparting knowledge, a homeroom teacher must be a father, a mother, a friend to be able to connect and share with students. Moreover, a homeroom teacher must also be a person who is truly dedicated, loves the profession, loves people and has humanity to fulfill the noble responsibility of "teaching students to be human, to become a useful citizen for society".

Teacher Nguyen Thi Luong is one of the longest-serving teachers at Dien Yen Primary School. At work, she is the deputy head of the professional group, a role model, a very enthusiastic and responsible teacher, and a person who is very passionate about her work.

Her exemplary and enthusiastic spirit has spread throughout the school and contributed to creating a movement of good teaching and good learning in our school with many teachers winning high prizes in the Excellent Teacher Competitions.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong - School Principal