Teacher Van Nhu Cuong uses Facebook to connect teachers and students

Associate Professor Van Nhu Cuong is famous for being "willing to spend" on Facebook with statuses that attract public opinion. His Facebook page has many students as friends.

Not only are they respected teachers who impart knowledge, many teachers also make their students crazy with their attractive "tricks". Many teachers even have their own fan page set up by their students...

Go to Facebook to understand students

When talking about respected teachers who are loved by many generations of students, we cannot fail to mention Associate Professor Van Nhu Cuong. “Teacher Cuong” - many students affectionately call him that.

Meeting him in the room that is both his residence and his workplace, he happily showed off his assets: two large glass jars containing thousands of paper cranes folded by his students as a thousand loving wishes for his health to continue accompanying his students. He said that last year, even though he was in the most serious treatment, he still "escaped the hospital" just to say a few words to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with his students.

Today's teachers need soft skills.

Nearly 80 years old, weak and unable to teach like in previous years, the teacher still meets and talks with students every day, sometimes just taking advantage of a little break time in the school yard. He is famous for being "willing to play" on Facebook (FB) with statuses that attract public opinion. His Facebook is friends with many students and has a "huge" number of followers of 116,000.

The teacher believes that FB is also a mirror for students to look at, to see how the teacher writes, what language he uses, how the teacher shares with students about life issues. The teacher said: “A few years ago when FB was popular, the school's students played a lot, there was a situation where students spoke badly about each other, hated each other, fought each other just because of random likes...

When I saw that situation, I held a meeting to get students’ opinions on the rules when using FB and they agreed that the rules were: no swearing, writing nonsense, badmouthing others or “recklessly” liking on FB without regard to right or wrong. I think teachers should also educate students on the culture of using FB, and guide them to behave properly on social networks.

However, to do that, teachers need to have soft skills, must care to understand students, to know their attitudes and be able to correct them in time. Teachers themselves must develop these skills to keep up with students, because teacher training schools do not teach them.

Despite his poor health, on important occasions such as the opening of the new school year, the closing of the school year, or the Lunar New Year, the teacher always had words of confidence to send to his students. His letter welcoming the new school year 2015-2016 moved many generations of students because of his closeness, care and love.

In the letter, the teacher wrote: “…In the future, you can become honest workers, skilled technicians, great entrepreneurs, excellent leaders, learned politicians…, but first of all, you must be kind people, knowing how to love and hate, for the people, for our beloved Vietnam…. That is what I expect from you.”

Beloved by his students and “causing a fever” on the online community with more than 138,000 followers is Dr. of Psychology Nguyen Hoang Khac Hieu, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education. Mr. Hieu won the title of Outstanding Young Face voted by the online community.

Not only handsome, Mr. Hieu is also a psychological consultant for young people. He has made many clips about hot issues of students such as: Dealing with perverts, dealing with robberies, clips related to living together and love, what to do when failing the university entrance exam...

Students even created a Facebook page to admire the teacher and gave him a poem expressing their feelings for him: “…You often help people with things/advise and scold the children, “draw a path for the deer”/You often stay up all night thinking/How to make the children focus on studying/You are still very young like me? Too much of a teen, too familiar with teen words/So many sincere words/There are teaching clips that are still offline/You give many good ideas/Necessary skills to students…”. With his contributions, teacher Hieu has received the Outstanding Young Teacher award at school and city levels.

Mr. Tran Quang Hung, Vice Principal of Experimental High School (Hanoi) said: “The approach to educating students now is much different from the past. Before, it was only about imparting knowledge, now it is about developing students' abilities.

Therefore, teachers cannot maintain the old way of teaching but must innovate their teaching methods to reach students' abilities. Teaching soft skills or guiding students to experiential and creative activities will help students develop their abilities more. This is very necessary because it brings great effectiveness in education.

Multi-functional to keep up with students

Having a teacher who not only imparts knowledge but also helps students develop soft skills and shares with them many issues in life is the desire of today's students.

Facebook is an effective communication channel between teachers and students.

Tran Ngoc Anh Son, a 12th grader at Experimental High School, said: “I hope that teachers will be both the ones to convey and the ones to receive the ideas we propose, not just follow a formula. Only then will we create diversity and interest in learning for students. At Experimental School, most of the teachers are quite dynamic and young, so they can easily keep up with us.

Instead of just learning dry theory in class, teachers have changed the teaching method by organizing playgrounds such as: thematic activities, scientific research, extracurricular activities... so that we can learn many skills, expand our knowledge outside of society. Through these activities, teachers and students understand each other and find common ground, so the acquisition of knowledge is also more effective.

In the integration period, developing teachers' soft skills is extremely important, no less important than providing knowledge. Teacher Nguyen Thu Van, Geography teacher, Experimental High School, said: "The qualities of teachers today are also much different from the past, because in addition to profound knowledge, teachers also have to acquire a lot of social knowledge, build soft skills to accompany the children. Teachers also communicate with children via email and Facebook to share difficulties in studying as well as in life."

Regarding this issue, Mr. Tran Quang Hung is concerned that training teachers in soft skills to be able to meet the educational reality is still a big gap. Good teachers now not only teach knowledge but also need to be trained in soft skills to be able to adapt to the new training environment.

Traditional teaching is one-way transmission, but now it is necessary to create two-way and three-way interactions between teachers and students, teachers and parents and society... That requires teachers to actively innovate teaching methods to attract students and achieve high efficiency in teaching.

Mr. Van Nhu Cuong said: "In teacher training schools, when training teachers, the focus is on knowledge, but there is no curriculum to teach skills or virtues of teachers. That is why there have been many cases of teachers beating students and students being rude to teachers in recent years"./.

According to VOV