Li Fei: There is a big world outside the mountains

"Listen to me thank you, Teacher Li Fei, because of your return, we know that there is a big world outside the mountain...", at the Hani Yiche Cottage in Honghe County, Honghe County, Yunnan Province, the sixth-grade classroom of Chepu Primary School in DayangJie Township came out with beautiful songs. With the childish voice, the reporter witnessed the style of Li Fei, a "post-95" teacher who returned to his hometown to teach, won the honorary title of the first "Flower of Yiche", and was shortlisted for the "Ma Yun Rural Normal Student Program" in 2019...

The Yiche people are a branch of the Hani people. At present, there are only more than 30,000 car people in the world. Among them, 27,000 Yiche people live in three townships of Dayangjie Township, Langdi Township and Chegu Township in Honghe County, Yunnan Province. Born in Yiche Family, Tosui Village, Langdi Town, Li Fei graduated from Lijiang Normal College in Yunnan In the fall of 2018, and was the first female college student in the local area to go out of the mountains and return to her hometown to become a rural teacher.

I want more Children of YiChe to see the big world outside the mountains

The cottages where the Yiche people live are generally small and have a small population, and the schools in the village are only teaching points run by grades, the first and second grades are taught by a teacher in the village, the third and fourth grades are taught by two teachers in the villages where the villages are concentrated, and the fifth and sixth grades are concentrated in the villages where the village committee is located. Li Fei said: "Fortunately, my parents who do not know how to read are enlightened, they do not think that sending girls to school is helping other people's families, and the teachers I meet all teach me with their hearts, encourage me to study well, and change my fate with knowledge." So, although I went to three schools in elementary school in 6 years, my academic performance has been quite good. ”

When I was in the sixth grade of primary school, the class teacher, Mr. Xu Dingqiong, dragged Li Fei and several other students to the county town and the state capital Mengzi to visit, study and play. Li Fei was deeply attracted by the colorful world outside the mountains, and she dreamed of how good it would be if she could live in the city. Teacher Xu told them: "Children, the teacher only has the ability to show you small cities such as county seats and state capitals, as long as you study well, the provincial city of Kunming, the capital Beijing and other big cities that the teacher has not yet been to, you can go to see it yourself, and even work and live there in the future!" ”

In order to see the big cities such as Kunming, the provincial capital and Beijing, which Teacher Xu talked about, Li Fei studied harder, successfully entered junior high school, and was admitted to a high school with good school conditions. In the autumn of 2015, Li Fei was admitted to the primary school English education major of Lijiang Normal College in Yunnan Province as she wished.

Li Fei said that Lijiang is a well-known tourist destination at home and abroad. Every year, there are many domestic and foreign tourists who come to Lijiang for tourism. Three years of study, winter and summer vacations, basically to the tourism-related companies internship. One is to contact tourists from all over the world to broaden their horizons and improve their English expression ability; the other is to reduce the financial pressure of their parents to go to college.

In the autumn of 2018, Li Fei was about to graduate, and a number of travel companies sent her invitations to join, but they were all rejected by her one by one, and she firmly chose to return to Dayangjie Township to become a special teacher.

With the development of the times, more and more young people have gone out of the mountains to work, but their cultural level is generally not high, and they basically do low-income physical work, unable to support their children, and can only send their children back to the mountains for their parents to take care of. And most of the old people are only busy with the fields on the mountain. The elderly do not know how to read and speak Mandarin, and the care of their children is basically free-range, and they can only do not be hungry or cold. Sending school-age children to school, most of them also use the school as a custody center, which does not have much incentive for children's learning. In the long run, even if the Yiche people walk out of the mountains, they still can't keep up with the pace of the times.

Li Fei said: "I am the lucky one among the Girls who have changed their fate due to knowledge!" If it weren't for the selfless dedication and perseverance of the teachers who insisted on teaching us, I would have had the opportunity to come out and see the big world outside the mountains! If even I am not willing to go back to being a teacher and help the children of my own ethnic group to see the world outside the mountains with knowledge, do you say that you call on other teachers to stick to the deep mountains and old forests and cultivate the children in the mountains? So, I have to come back! Li Fei wants to pass on the love she once felt as a teacher, so that more Yiche people can change their fate with knowledge and live a happier and happier life.

Start with the "head" and be friends with the children of Yiche with your heart

In September 2018, Li Fei became a special teacher at Chepu Primary School in Dayangjie Township, Honghe County.

Chepu Primary School is a small school in the village, with about 600 students all year round, 22 teaching staff, and 99% of the students are the children of Yiche people. Children who have just entered school basically do not understand Mandarin, let alone speak Mandarin. Therefore, first-year students are bilingual (Hani, Mandarin).

In the first semester of Li Fei's teaching, the principal assigned her to teach the first grade and be the class teacher.

When she walked into the classroom on the first day and stood on the podium and saw 45 students sitting under the stage, she was stunned. The children's hair was covered with dirty and messy hair, and even more exaggerated was the girl's, who could barely see their eyes, because they were covered by fluffy and messy hair. Just when she didn't know how to say hello to the children, she heard the children in the audience whispering: Our class teacher is so beautiful...

Pretty? Yes, let's start with the word "pretty" for the kids. Li Fei asked the children: "Do you want to be as beautiful as a teacher?" The children replied loudly, "Yes!" "So, is it okay for the teacher to wash your hair and cut your hair?" The kids all said, "Good! As a result, Li Fei became a veritable "hairdresser" from the first day of teaching. A day's hard work in exchange for the "beautiful" and "handsome" of the whole class, everyone is very happy! They asked Li Fei: "Teacher, why are you so powerful?" Li Fei said: "As long as everyone reads well, they will definitely be more powerful than teachers in the future!" "After a semester, the students taught by Teacher Li Fei have become a beautiful landscape of Chepu Primary School.

Li Fei said that she has today, to put it bluntly, the teacher who taught her is good to her with heart, she regards the teacher as her confidant friend, and regards the words spoken by the teacher as "holy will". So, from the first day of teaching, the most she thought about was how to be a good friend in the hearts of students.

Li Fei had studied guzheng, and when she played guzheng in the school dormitory, she found that there were students eavesdropping outside the door, so she called the students in to listen, and enthusiastically taught the students to play. One day, a student accidentally broke the string, scared tears came out, Li Fei hurried to comfort: "It's okay, this shows that you want to play the guzheng well, playing the guzheng is the same as learning Chinese and mathematics, as long as you practice more, it will definitely get better and better every day." ”

The ancient tea of Hani Cottage is famous far and wide, and the ancient tea of Yiche is even more beautiful in tea flavor. Li Fei called the students who had ancient tea trees at home to the dormitory, taught the craft of brewing good tea hand in hand, explained the tea culture, and then let the students go home and teach them to the adults.

Li Fei is a close friend of the students, and the students are willing to talk to her about any things they have and difficult things, and she also does her best to help the students solve their worries and difficulties. Li Fei has become a good friend in the hearts of more and more students, and the words she speaks have become the "holy will" in the hearts of students. As a result, the students in the subjects she taught were getting better and better. Li Fei was also transferred to teach fifth-grade Chinese and English because of her outstanding teaching performance.

Go from village to village to visit your home and win the support of the students' families

Taking over the teaching of the fifth grade, the first problem Li Fei encountered was that students generally had no enthusiasm for learning. As a Yiche person, Li Fei knows that the root cause of the problem is that Yiche people have lived in deep mountains and old forests for a long time, and the traditional concept of early sowing, early fruiting, early birth of children, and early happiness is deeply rooted in the minds of Yiche people. Everyone thinks that sending girls to study is to help other people's families contribute, the more girls read, the longer the time they go to school, the more they lose money, and deep down there is no motivation to support girls to read more. Girls themselves also think that how many books they read have not married a good family early, and their interest in reading is naturally not great.

Li Fei believes that in order to teach senior students well, we must first change the concept of students' families and improve students' interest in learning. The most practical way to change the concept of students' families is to visit their families from house to house, and use their own examples to make students' families understand that girls have the same interest in reading good books, can eat with wages, and have the same ability to repay their parents' parenting grace.

The grandfather of the student Xiaohua listened to his granddaughter come back before, and the teacher Li Fei who was newly assigned to teach them was not only a college student, but also a car girl, who was beautiful and knew more, and the granddaughter said that she did not want to marry her in-laws early, but to listen to Teacher Li Fei's words, study well, and eat with her salary in the future by knowledge, and honor her parents. Grandpa Xiaohua said, "Don't listen to your teacher's blowing, I don't believe your teacher is a car girl." "It wasn't until one night in June last year, Xiaohua and a few classmates led Teacher Li Fei to Visit Xiaohua's home, Grandpa Xiaohua asked Teacher Li Fei about the customs of several Yiche people, listened to Teacher Li Fei talk about her family situation and reading experience, and was convinced that Teacher Li Fei was really a Yiche girl. Grandpa Xiaohua said, "Since there are already girls among our Yiche people who come out by studying well and eating with the state's salary, I believe that my granddaughter can also." ”

Since then, he has not only supported and urged his granddaughter to listen to Teacher Li Fei's words, but also told the example of Teacher Li Fei in the village, calling on the grandfathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers who stayed behind in the cottage to support and urge their grandchildren, granddaughters, grandchildren, and granddaughters to read well, like Teacher Li Fei, to contribute to the progress of Yiche people to keep up with the times and live a better and better life.

Li Fei intends to turn over the photos taken on her mobile phone when she went to college and traveled to show the students, so that the students know that the big world outside the mountains is colorful and wonderful. Her hard work has been exchanged for fruitful fruits. After one semester, the fifth grade students who were taught by Ms. Li Fei became more and more motivated to learn. Li Fei became one of the most popular teachers among the students, and the students' wish in their hearts was to let Li Fei be their teacher.

Li Fei is the "Flower of Yiche" selected by the Hani Yiche Cultural Association of Honghe County in the first session. He is now the vice president and secretary general of the Honghe County Hani Yiche Cultural Association. He Juhei, honorary president of the Honghe County Hani Yiche Cultural Association, said: "In the two years since she returned to her hometown, she has not only taught well and been well received by everyone, but also done a lot of practical things in the association to promote the elimination of old bad habits such as early marriage of Yiche people and the big handling of red and white affairs, establish respect for teachers and emphasize education, and advocate a new style of cottage civilization." She is the role model of today's Young People of Yiche, the pride of Yiche people! ”

Improve the quality of teaching in a form that students are familiar with and like

The teachers of the first grade of Chepu Primary School are taught alternately through bilingualism (Hani, Mandarin). Students have just adapted to the teacher's pure Mandarin teaching after the second grade to the third grade, and then added a language learning, especially the English alphabet and Hanyu Pinyin look basically the same, how to let students distinguish and remember English letters, words, sentences? Li Fei's method is to give full play to the advantages of Yiche people who can talk and sing, and can walk and dance, compile English words and sentences into the songs of the Hani Yiche people who are familiar with the hani people who love to sing, and compile the English texts with strong storytelling into sitcoms for students to change their roles and take turns on the stage to perform, stimulate students' interest in learning, and let students remember knowledge in joy.

Xiao Wei, a fifth-grade student, said: After school, we like to drag Teacher Li Fei to climb the mountain to see the scenery, and go to the terraces to catch fish and shrimp and loach. Because in the mountain climbing competition, Teacher Li Fei will not only cheer us up loudly, but also shout at the students who climb the mountain to pull the students who climb the mountain slowly, telling everyone that learning and climbing are the same, and the students who study well should help the students with poor learning, and only when everyone goes up together is fun. Go to the terraces to catch fish and shrimp to catch loach, teacher Li Fei will ask how fish, shrimp, loach in Hani dialect how to say, how to read and write in Mandarin, how to read and write in English, students think that there are several ways to read and write a thing, it is very interesting to pull Teacher Li Fei out to play in the mountains and rivers, and it can also consolidate the knowledge learned in class.

Li Fei, as the Young Pioneer counselor of Chepu Primary School, put the excellent qualities of unity, hard work, respect for the elderly and love for the young into the Young Pioneers' theme activities, took local materials, and took the roots, branches, flowers, grasses, and rice spikes in the terraces to the Young Pioneers Activity Room to teach the Young Pioneers to make handicrafts, inspire students to discover the treasures around them, and carry out the activities with great sound and color.

Pu Ouwei, principal of The Central School of Dayangjie Township in Honghe County, said: Teacher Li Fei is the teacher who teaches the most diligently and most wants to help the children of Yiche people to go to the mountains to see the big world with solid and rich cultural knowledge.

When she graduated from college, Li Fei had already decided to give up her work and life in the big city, do her best to teach the children in her hometown, and learn from good rural teachers. She is determined to teach well with the teachers who adhere to Yiche Cottage, so that the children of Yiche people can go to the mountains with solid and rich cultural knowledge to see the big world, serve the country well, and live a happy life that is getting better and better every day.

(Author: Wang Yue, special correspondent of this magazine)

Source: Educator Magazine