For many high school graduates in counties, villages and mountainous areas, going to college is a turning point for them to leave their hometowns and enter the city, and even the "portal" to another city for the first time. Wang Jia, who was admitted to the Zhuhai campus of Beijing Normal University from Sichuan Province, will go to Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture (hereinafter referred to as "Liangshan Prefecture") to teach at Yuexi Middle School 500 kilometers away from her hometown of Luzhou City after graduation.
Wang Jia was accompanied by 9 students from Sichuan, who were in their early 20s, all of whom were normal students of the "Zhiyuan Plan" for targeted employment. In 2020, when they filled in the "Zhiyuan Plan", which was approved in advance by the school, they had already assumed that after graduating from their bachelor's degree, they would go to Liangshan Prefecture to teach for 6 years.
Stand in front of the podium
Although she spent four years in college preparing to teach in Liangshan Prefecture, Wang Jia was still a little nervous when she really wanted to become a teacher who taught and educated people. She teaches Chinese, and during the summer vacation, she is always immersed in the Sichuan Provincial College Entrance Examination Chinese test papers. She also searched the Internet for Yi language teaching videos to learn basic polite expressions such as "hello" and "goodbye". She learned that there are many ethnic groups in Liangshan Prefecture, such as Yi, Han, Tibetan and Hui, of which the Yi account for more than 50%. In mid-August, Wang Jia will travel there to start at least six years as a teacher.
In August last year, Wang Jia and several other classmates received an invitation from the Yuexi County Education Bureau to visit Yuexi Middle School. Get off from the newly opened Yuexi high-speed railway station, and there is a more than 20-minute drive, and you can catch a glimpse of the campus with red bricks, white tiles and green grass in the endless mountains.
The school stands on a 175-acre flat dam surrounded by mountains. Sun Shuangxiang, principal of Yuexi Middle School, said that this is the best piece of flat land in Yuexi County.
"It's more beautiful than I've ever seen in the county." Wang Jia said that if it goes well, three years later, she who was born in 2001 will send more than 40 students born around 2009 in her class into the college entrance examination room. She can't predict the future outcome, but she wants to say to her students, "Trust me, I'll do my best to help you achieve your dreams."
Sun Shuangxiang introduced that in 2024, the number of high school graduates in Yuexi Middle School will be 1,111, of which 354 will have a college entrance examination score exceeding the undergraduate line (including undergraduate preparatory department), and most of the students chose schools in Sichuan Province when filling in their volunteers.
"If you want to get out of the mountains and see the wider world, you will become more and more confident." "But the purpose of higher education is not to get out of poverty, but to help get rid of poverty." ”
The teacher who was needed
In Yuexi County, there is an average of 1 student for every 3 people. Qu Muerzu, deputy county magistrate of Yuexi County, said that Yuexi County has a huge student base, with a permanent population of more than 300,000, of which about 95,000 are primary and secondary school students, accounting for about 1/3 of the total population.
Wang Jia learned that many children in Yuexi County are left-behind children. Comparable to the large number of students in school are farmers who have gone out to work. Qu Muerzu said that there are 100,000 people working outside the county in Yuexi County, more than 90 percent of the county's mountainous land, and the industrial structure is relatively simple, mainly planting tobacco, rape, apples and other cash crops, in addition to a cement factory.
There are more than 5,800 students enrolled in Yuexi Middle School, which is in contrast to the large student base due to the number of teachers. Sun Shuangxiang told the reporter of China Youth Daily · China Youth Network that there are currently more than 280 teachers in Yuexi Middle School, of which more than 100 are young teachers newly recruited in the past three years. There are only 20 or 30 backbone teachers around the age of 35, and the rest are teachers who are approaching retirement age.
In many economically underdeveloped areas, teachers are a scarce resource, which is also an important reason why Beijing Normal University established the "Zhiyuan Program" in 2020 with the support of the Ministry of Education. The "Zhiyuan Plan" recruited undergraduate targeted employment normal students from the provinces where the last 52 impoverished counties in the mainland were located at that time.
Wang Jia told reporters that during this holiday, students from Yuexi Middle School continued to send her WeChat, and the questions were not limited to knowledge points, learning experience, life experience, etc., and most of them were students whom Wang Jia met when she went to Yuexi Middle School to share in June this year. After finishing the sharing, several students looked at her seriously, "Will you come again in the future?" "How long are you going to stay here?"
The enthusiasm and curiosity of the students made Wang Jia feel "needed". Now, she is preparing gifts for this group of students at Yuexi Middle School – postcards, word books, planners...... She also asked a friend to buy the cultural and creative peripherals of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and a Yi girl who communicated with her was about to enter the third year of high school, and her target school for the college entrance examination was the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. She also wants to be like Wang Jia and come back to build her hometown after graduation.
Reality and ideals
Chen Zhigang, who is about to go to Yuexi Middle School with Wang Jia to teach, told reporters that the environment in Yuexi County is worse than that in his hometown of Mianyang, and although his parents are worried that he will suffer, he does not feel that this is a kind of "hardship". Compared with the hustle and bustle of the city, he prefers the quietness and leisure of the county seat and the countryside. What's more, this school is very close to the high-speed rail station, and the transportation is relatively convenient. In addition, he and Wang Jia are very satisfied with the dormitory provided by the school for them, with one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen and one bathroom, and the beds, sofas, coffee tables, etc. are ready, "you can move in directly".
When it comes to wages, Wang Jia and Chen Zhigang both said they were "quite satisfied". Chen Zhigang said that the salary of his classmates who work in Chengdu is about the same, and he does not have to pay rent, and the surrounding consumption is also very low. In addition, according to reports, this batch of "Zhiyuan Plan" students who graduated from Beijing Normal University have supporting policies in terms of medical care, spouse employment, and children's schooling. Beijing Normal University has also launched a series of long-term support and lifting measures. For example, for the graduates of the "Zhiyuan Plan" and the "Excellent Teacher Plan" that followed, the school raised its own funds and gave each person a reward of 100,000 yuan.
Chen Zhigang remembers that a front-line teacher once told him that he had to plan for 15 years to become a teacher. He feels that being a teacher is a long-term career, if not a lifelong career. He didn't know if he would continue to stay there after 6 years, but in the 6 years he stayed there, he wanted those children who didn't have so good grades to find their future direction. "The worse their foundation, the more they need us to help them. It doesn't matter, I have confidence and time. Chen Zhigang said.
Faced with this group of students who are only six or seven years younger than him, Chen Zhigang believes that the bigger challenge may be the family relationships and interpersonal relationships of the students outside of teaching. Chen Zhigang's high school homeroom teacher would communicate with them by writing letters, and he planned to "inherit" them, encouraging students to write letters to him, and he would also reply to them without hesitation.
"Those who can't do my best can have no regrets", this is a sentence from Wang Anshi in "The Story of Wandering Bao Zen Mountain", and it is also Wang Jia's words written on the blackboard to students who are about to enter the third year of high school. She wanted to tell them with that phrase, and also to herself: do your best.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Network Intern Reporter Zhang Qianyu Reporter Fan Weichen Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily