The story of the 'reversal' of the valedictorian who is good at teaching English
(Baonghean.vn) - In the 2023 High School Teacher Competition, there are not many valedictorians from disadvantaged schools. Therefore, the achievement of teacher Bui Thi My Hao - teacher of Do Luong 2 High School, valedictorian of English is truly admirable.
Failure is not the end
The 2023 Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition for High School Level has just ended with the rate of teachers recognized as over 97%. The rate of teachers who failed is quite rare and most of them failed from round 1 with the presentation of measures to improve the quality of teaching. This is also the reality in previous competitions because most of the teachers selected to participate in the Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition are teachers with many achievements, carefully selected at the grassroots level.
“Before becoming valedictorian, I failed the Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition twice. Both times I failed in the first round” - teacher Bui Thi My Hao began her story like that. She also confided: In the past, I often gave wrong answers in very awkward situations, sometimes I answered the wrong question, sometimes I missed the answer. However, in any situation, after each exam and accepting failure, I was really sad and felt that I had not fulfilled my responsibility to the school.
Teacher Bui Thi My Hao was born in 1983 and was the valedictorian of Vinh Pedagogical University nearly 20 years ago. During her studies and work, teachers and colleagues commented that she was meticulous, serious, and had many achievements. That is also the reason why during many years working at Do Luong 2 High School, she was chosen by the school many times to participate in the Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition. She herself is aware that the school's trust is an honor for her, but participating in the competition twice in a row and failing both times is truly "different". Faced with these disadvantages, in 2023 - the third time returning to the Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition, she faced a lot of pressure and stress.
Many people say that the provincial excellent teacher exam is not too difficult. But for me, it was like a bird “afraid of the curved branch”, so before this exam, I spent more than 3 months preparing, staying up until 1-2 am every night to complete the presentation test and review the lectures, come up with situations to have appropriate teaching methods.
English is not an advantage for rural schools. At Do Luong 2 High School, this is even more evident because this is the school with the lowest entrance score in the district. As an English teacher, Ms. Bui Thi My Hao always worries about how to create a love of foreign languages in the school's students and this was demonstrated at this year's Provincial Excellent Teacher Competition.
"In the first round, I shared solutions to improve cultural knowledge for 10th grade students through some activities applied to "Culture" lessons. These are experiences that we have carried out directly at school through club models and "open" lessons so that students can develop their cultural knowledge." - Ms. My Hao said.
After passing the first round, teacher Bui Thi My Hao was able to somewhat relieve the pressure from herself. Therefore, in the second round, even though it took only 30 minutes from the time she drew the lesson to getting to know the students of class 11A11 - Nguyen Xuan On High School (Dien Chau), she regained her confidence as the "leader" in the lesson.
Talking about this part of the exam, teacher My Hao said: My lesson is a lecture about the project of an ideal city in the future. This is a test that many candidates consider difficult, especially when students do not interact. When I "caught" this lesson, I thought that if I did well, it would be easy to get a high score, but on the contrary, if I did not achieve the lesson's goal, I might lose points. Personally, I like such lectures because teachers can develop their abilities.
Teacher Bui Thi My Hao's class began with an interesting warm-up with a crossword puzzle, which both connected the content that needed to be reviewed and led to the main topic of the lesson. The project part was divided into four groups and the students presented a picture about the ideal city of the future. During the 45-minute lesson, the teacher and students interacted actively and enthusiastically. Students had the opportunity to self-evaluate and evaluate each other, and finally, the teacher summarized the comments and gave them points, contributing to achieving the objectives of the lesson.
I think I was lucky because the students in class 11A11 were very cooperative with the teacher and they were really capable. When I said the last sentence of thanking them, the bell rang to end the class. At that moment, I breathed a sigh of relief and thought that I had a complete lesson as expected.
Teaching with passion
With two fairly successful exams, teacher Bui Thi My Hao shared that she was relieved to pass this year's competition. However, what surprised her more was that she had surpassed nearly 100 candidates to win the top prize. The award is a source of encouragement for her to have more motivation to stick with her career.
Teaching is also a job that she has loved since she was very young. Her father is also a teacher, he teaches literature but has a talent for foreign languages and can use many languages such as French, Russian, Chinese, Thai. He passed on his love for foreign languages to his daughter by "ever since I was not in school, every night my father let me listen to a cassette teaching Chinese on the radio. Therefore, I could hear and speak simple words in Chinese very early. Later, in high school, I also had a talent for foreign languages, was an excellent student and I chose to be an English teacher as a matter of course following the family tradition".
After nearly 20 years as an English teacher at Do Luong 2 High School, teacher Bui Thi My Hao has experienced many "joys and sorrows" with this subject. For her, it is happy that English, from an unfamiliar subject, students have begun to get used to and love it. But she is also sad because compared to other subjects, the quality of English learning is not high and for many years it has been a low point of the district.
"For many exam seasons, our school has had no good English students and that is a concern for the school's English teachers. There are many reasons for this, but teachers are the first to take responsibility." - Ms. Hao frankly shared.
To improve her expertise, teacher Bui Thi My Hao constantly learns. One special thing about her is that she is very passionate about scientific research and writing innovative experiences. After 6 times participating, she has had 5 initiatives awarded A prizes, 1 initiative awarded B prizes at the industry level. She also shared that writing initiatives is not at all for achievements but because of her love, because she wants to share the things she has learned from the process of directly teaching.
Having taken exams and failed, teacher Bui Thi My Hao is not afraid to share her difficulties with her students. However, instead of looking at it negatively, she sees it as a lesson to learn from and change herself.
Even in teaching at school, after each exam season, she and her colleagues try to find answers about success, failure and gradually adjust to make teaching more effective. Good news came to her this school year, when after much effort, this year she had a student win second prize in English for grade 12 at the Provincial Excellent Student Competition for the 2023-2024 school year.
With the first prize at the provincial excellent teacher competition, the female teacher who won the valedictorian award in 2023 confided that for her, this is not the end but the starting point. Learning will never stop and challenges, difficulties as well as successes are still waiting ahead…/.
