After more than 15 years of working in Que Phong district, the family of four of teacher Vu Quang Trung and teacher Nguyen Thi Nhan - teachers at Tri Le Boarding Secondary School for Ethnic Minorities still have to live in a cramped room of just over 30 square meters in the school's public housing area. The room is small, the children are growing up day by day, so the family's daily activities are really difficult. Most of the area in the room is currently used for three beds, including a bunk bed for two children, one in grade 6 and one in grade 3. The rest of the property is not much. In the room, most of it is still books. In the remaining corner next to the window is an old rectangular wooden table, which is both a desk, a reception table and sometimes a place for the couple to tutor their students. The kitchen, storage area... are located behind, still makeshift and sketchy.
Teacher Vu Quang Trung (born in 1983) is from Cau Giat town, Quynh Luu district. In 2004, after graduating from the Mathematics - Physics department of Nghe An Pedagogical College, he volunteered to work in the mountainous district of Que Phong as a reinforcement. After 5 years, while many colleagues had the opportunity to go to the lowlands, he stayed. The relationship with teacher Nguyen Thi Nhan - also a teacher at the same school, from the lowlands to the village, gave teachers more reason to be attached to this land.
Recalling the first days of working in the highlands, teacher Vu Quang Trung added: Before coming to Tri Le, I had worked at many other difficult schools. Back then, the road to Que Phong was very difficult. Getting to the schools in the commune was even more difficult because there were no roads or electricity. When we first got married, my husband and I had nothing, low salaries, and only dared to return to our hometown once in a while because it was too expensive.
Being attached to the Tri Le land of Que Phong, where 100% of the students are ethnic minorities, of which nearly half are Mong students, Mr. Trung and Ms. Nhan are even more aware of the difficulties and hardships of this border school. Previously, when the school had not yet implemented boarding school, in addition to teaching at school, going to each house and each village to encourage students to come to school was a daily routine for the teachers. Even now, every time they hear news that students are about to drop out of school to get married or go to the South to work, the teachers worry, advise, and encourage them to stay in school, try to go to school to get a diploma, and study to high school to have a decent job.
It is difficult to motivate students to go to school. But to train them to become excellent students at the district and provincial levels is much more difficult. In recent years, Ms. Nhan, as the head of the Literature group, and Mr. Trung, as a key teacher of the Department of Education and Training of Que Phong district, have worked with other teachers in the school to train many students to win high prizes in excellent student competitions. Many of them later passed the entrance exams with high scores to high schools. In the past 3 years alone, Mr. Trung's students have had 3 valedictorians and are among the candidates with the highest scores at the Provincial Boarding Ethnic High School and Boarding Ethnic High School No. 2. In the 2022-2023 school year, Ms. Nhan also participated in the group of teachers who reviewed the provincial excellent student exams of the district and had 1 student win the Second Prize and 4 students win the Encouragement Prize in Literature at the provincial level.
Sharing about the process of nurturing excellent students, teacher Vu Quang Trung added: The starting point of our school's students is not favorable because the good students often go to the district's boarding school to study from grade 6. For that reason, before choosing the team, I think I must have faith in the students. Then, I must know for sure their abilities, stick to their abilities to teach appropriately, and then gradually increase the teaching. If students have a solid foundation of knowledge, they will have the motivation to continue studying and trying.
To have successful exam seasons, Mr. Trung and Ms. Nhan also strived to improve themselves so as not to fall behind. The most memorable recent memory was the 2020 provincial excellent teacher competition. At that time, both were a rare couple who won first prize at the district level and were selected to participate in the provincial competition and were recognized as excellent teachers of the province. During their work, both of them also regularly wrote experience initiatives, participated in the Ministry-level electronic lesson plan writing contest to share their experiences in the process of directly teaching Literature and Math in a special teaching environment with many ethnic minority students, and for many consecutive years received certificates of merit from the province, district, and education sector...
Speaking more about her work, teacher Nguyen Thi Nhan shared: Although we work in a difficult area, the conditions are still difficult, but we determine that no matter where, in any position, teachers must be dedicated to their students, must be responsible for their work. Staying at this highland school, we also see more the value of bringing letters to the local people and that has kept us here, attached to this land.
Tho Ba Xa - a former student of Nam Can Primary and Secondary Boarding School for Ethnic Minorities (Ky Son) is now a 10th grader and one of the few students of the school who passed the entrance exam to the province's Boarding High School for Ethnic Minorities. Far from home, far from school, far from his old teacher, Ba Xa occasionally uses social media to go online to text his math teacher Nguyen Thi Tinh - his homeroom teacher when he was studying in Nam Can. Many times he texted her, he told her he missed her, missed the school and missed the food she cooked.
What is the joy of a teacher in the highlands? We asked teacher Nguyen Thi Tinh - one of more than 80 exemplary teachers who will be recognized by the Provincial Labor Federation during the November 20th celebration this year and she answered very sincerely, "It is when students who have graduated still remember and know how to come back to visit her, visit her teacher, be obedient and hard-working". Telling more about the student who "remembers her rice" Tho Ba Xa, Ms. Tinh said: Ba Xa lost his father when he was young and his mother remarried so he lived with his uncle. Later, when he was in junior high school, Ba Xa stayed at the school and was selected by me to be in the team for the Math competition. In addition to teaching in class, most of the remaining time, Ba Xa and the team members come to my house to study. Many times I also cook for the students. On the day of the competition for excellent students, when he could not finish the test at the end, the boy wrote in the test: I'm sorry teacher, I ate too much rice at your house, but I could not finish the test. But happily, Ba Xa still passed the district's excellent student exam and later passed the provincial boarding school for ethnic minorities.
Teacher Nguyen Thi Tinh was born in 1983 and started teaching in 2004. For all those years since graduating, she has been attached to Ky Son land, including nearly 10 years teaching in Muong Long and from 2013 until now she has moved to teach in the border commune of Nam Can. At Nam Can Ethnic Boarding Secondary School, Ms. Tinh is also in a special situation because both she and her husband came from Thanh Chuong to teach in the highlands. Up to now, although her husband has moved to Thanh Chuong to teach for 13 years, she still stays. 6 years ago, she brought her son who was in grade 3 to live with her. At the beginning of this year, her second son, who just entered grade 6, also came to live with her. The three of them live together in the school's dormitory. Every 2 or 3 weeks, her husband visits them. Occasionally, when she has work or work, she returns to her hometown. The rest of her time is mainly spent on school and her students.
15 years of marriage, the couple has only been together for a few years, so every time she talks about her situation, teacher Nguyen Thi Tinh always feels troubled. She also said that when her husband decided to go to the South, they both hesitated between staying or going, between one person going back and the other person quitting their jobs. But in the end, for the future of the whole family, her husband still had to decide to go back first and she stayed with her students.
At first, when she first came to Thanh Chuong, every Saturday morning her husband spent nearly 7 hours riding his motorbike to visit his wife and children. Living together, for just over 1 night, on Sunday morning he was worried about returning home in time for the first classes of the week. Because his wife had to be away from her husband, and his children had to be away from their mother, she admitted that she could not take care of the family and children properly. So, after 3 years of primary schooling in her hometown, her first son decided to send him to her mother's school for easier instruction. As for her second son, because "every day she called her mother, she cried", she accepted the hardship so that the three of them could be close to each other. Talking about her children, she also had her own regrets: "When my child was studying in Thanh Chuong, he was able to study English until grade 3. But when he went to Nam Can, because there were no teachers, he could not study in grades 4 and 5. His English now has many limitations compared to his friends in the lowlands"...
Telling more about her work, Ms. Tinh enthusiastically talked about teaching students and nurturing excellent students. In order not to fall behind the new education program, Ms. Tinh is very eager to learn from her friends in the lowlands, self-study online and she spends a lot of time doing research. Since 2011, every 3 years, she has achieved the title of excellent teacher at the district level, in 2020 she achieved the title of excellent teacher at the provincial level.
In addition, as the deputy head of the Natural Science group, every year she participates in training the school's excellent student team in many grades, achieving high results for many consecutive years. To achieve this result, it is impossible to count how many Saturdays, Sundays, and evenings she has brought her students home to train, feed, and house them during intensive exam preparation days... Putting aside family affection, Ms. Tinh stays with the students in the highlands with a simple dream, that the students study hard, make progress, and later have an education to reduce poverty, reduce suffering, and no longer be illiterate./.