In 1997, Zhang Guimei was transferred to Huaping County Nationalities Middle School.
This is a poor school, with backward educational resources and a weak student base. But in just one year, this bad card was played by Zhang Guimei: in the 1998 middle school examination, Minzhong ranked first in Huaping County; in the 1999 middle school examination, Minzhong ranked second in the whole district.
In 2008, Zhang Guimei founded the country's first all-free girls' senior high school. The girls who come to school are girls from poor families, who have no excellent talent, no comfortable learning environment, and even need to learn while doing farm work. But Zhang Guimei led them out of the college entrance examination: in 2011, the online rate of Huaping Women's High School was 94% and the online rate of undergraduates was 73%; in 2015, the online rate of female high school undergraduates was as high as 99%; in 2020, the online rate of female high schools was 44%, and the online rate of undergraduates was 94%.
This report card, which is more beautiful than many key schools, benefits from Zhang Guimei's "madness" of learning to die without dying.
Zhang Guimei was interviewed
Teacher Zhang's "madness" is closely related to her life experience.
In 1957, she was born in Mudanjiang to a peasant family, because of her family's poverty, she suffered from snacks. When she was a teenager, her mother died of illness, and she followed her sister to the border. Traveling around Yunnan, it wasn't until 1990 that she got the job she wanted and met the right partner.
Unfortunately, in 1996, bad luck struck again, and her husband suddenly died of cancer. Not yet out of the pain of losing a loved one, a year later, she herself was diagnosed with uterine fibroids, and the tumor was as large as a five-month-old fetus.
Zhang Guimei was not favored by fate, but she did not become decadent and degenerate, but chose to fight against fate. Even though she was suffering from 23 diseases and was on the verge of death several times, she never thought of giving up.
It is also these experiences that make her stronger than ordinary people and understand the meaning of hard work.
After being transferred to minzhong, Zhang Guimei became the most "fierce" teacher. Looking at this group of silly and innocent children, she told them bluntly: You are all poor children with nothing, and if you don't study well, you have no way out. Even if you enter the society, you can only do the hardest work and take the least money.
The students were shocked by the truth and shrugged their heads, but Teacher Zhang Guimei did not have the slightest sympathy, and she practiced "hard study" with no expression. She set strict classroom discipline: no desertions, careful lectures, and notes. not
Whether it was her class or not, she would stare outside the classroom. Once a student is caught violating the rules, she will be severely punished. Even if it is ten minutes between classes, she will use it, either to carry a few students out to check the knowledge points, or to stand on the podium to answer questions. On weekends, everyone else was busy relaxing, but she took all the students to the classroom and made up lessons for them for free.
Entering the school at six o'clock, returning to the dormitory at ten o'clock, and staying open all year round are her normal work. In order not to delay the teaching schedule, she postponed the tumor surgery again and again.
There was a tumor the size of a five-month-old fetus, and she couldn't stand up straight, and she walked step by step. Other teachers advised her to go to the doctor first, but she was worried that changing teachers would affect students' learning. She held on until all the students walked into the exam room, and finally, the tumor removed from her body weighed two pounds.
After the operation, the doctor asked her to take a six-month break. However, for the sake of the new students, Zhang Guimei, who had rested for less than a month and whose wounds had not yet fully healed, returned to the podium. Due to excessive fatigue, the condition recurs several times. Leaders, colleagues, and students all let her be hospitalized, but she resolutely refused.
She said: "My career is teaching, my hope is for students, and I will not go first without sending them out of school."
Under her almost "masochistic" insistence, the first batch of private middle school students counterattacked successfully. At the bottom of the school with a chaotic student source, her students not only never violated the rules and regulations, but also beat the thirteen middle schools in the county and won the 1998 middle school examination in Huaping County.
With excellent educational achievements, Zhang Guimei has taken root in the people. Originally, she planned to live a peaceful and stable life, but a few years later, she made the decision to change her life. Because the local women were touched by the corners of their clothes, they felt that they had no innocence, and they hanged themselves as soon as they returned.
When Zhang Guimei heard this, she was very heartbroken, and she sighed anxiously: It's just a small thing, how can it be so ignorant?
As a woman, as a teacher, she wanted to help this group of poor people. However, she has lived in the countryside for more than a decade and worked in the most remote mountainous areas for decades. She was well aware that girls in the mountains were an abandoned group, who were treated as valuable commodities by their original families at birth and as useful tools by their marriages and families when they grew up, and never told them: You are a person.
Zhang Guimei knew that if she wanted to solve the problems for these girls from the root, she must let them go out of the mountains and into the university. For only by separating themselves from their original families can they be freed from the shackles of feudal thought; and after receiving higher education, they can become sober and wise real people.
But reading is not an easy task for mountain girls, and going to high school is even more delusional for them. In order to send girls from mountainous areas to college, she wrote "Ideas and Plans on The Establishment of Huaping County Poor Girls' High School", and she decided to establish an exclusive high school for girls.
Establishing an all-free high school is too difficult for Zhang Guimei. That huge amount of school construction funds, even if she did not eat or drink and work for hundreds of years, she could not come up with it. But for the sake of the girls' lives, she put down Qinggao and held her thick pile of honorary certificates to collect donations from various departments. In five years, she ran into walls countless times, and was even recognized as a beggar because she was too embarrassed. It wasn't until 2008 that she raised funds to build the country's first all-free girls' high school.
This girls-only secondary school is a beacon of hope for female students in mountainous areas, illuminating a path for their dim lives.
In the face of female high school students who are more difficult than the students of the people's middle school, Zhang Guimei will practice the concept of hard learning more thoroughly. In addition to the regular teaching management, she also spent a lot of time collecting high-quality test papers from all over the country, and in the most cash-strapped years, the children had no money to buy revision materials, so she took out her life savings and bought them practice questions. These exam papers are done by students over and over again until each question is done.
In order to supervise the students' learning, she even supported the sick body to serve as a supervisor herself. In Huaping Girls' High School, Zhang Guimei can often be seen holding a loudspeaker and urging students.
Some students entered the classroom late, and her loudspeaker immediately made a sound: Hurry up, enter the classroom; some students are lazy, and she sternly reprimands: don't be lazy, study immediately; when she sees the students sleeping, she will yell: Now is the time to sleep? What to do at night?
What's even more "crazy" is that to save time, she only gives students ten minutes of meal time.
These moves are too extreme for some. Some people even criticized the unscientific tactics of the sea. But Zhang Guimei did not think so, the stupid bird wants to fly to the blue sky, there is only one way to work hard.
She said: I don't care if I am scientific or not, I can get into a good school and count as one.
The hard work was really hard, but not a single student complained. Because they know that if Teacher Zhang does not push them with all his might, this life will only be more bitter.
Physical exertion is nothing to Zhang Guimei, because what makes her most tired is the backward ideological concepts here.
When the school started one fall, a girl didn't come to report. Zhang Guimei was very surprised, although she knew that the conditions at home of this student were not good, but Huaping Girls' High School was originally free, and this student was still the top student in the class, so it was reasonable to say that he should not come.
Thinking about it, Zhang Guimei felt that there was only one possibility: something was wrong at home. Zhang Guimei quickly ran to the student's home. What made her angry and sighed was that her family was actually not allowed to study because of the lack of people to work!
Seeing that the college entrance examination is about to take the college entrance examination, the students are studying for one minute less, Zhang Guimei is heartbroken, how can students waste months of time doing farm work? She immediately proposed to the parents of the students to let their children go back to school, but she did not want them to insist on not letting them go. Zhang Guimei could not, so she had to take out a few hundred yuan to "buy" the students.
Such a farce is not new in the high school, and many students have had similar dilemmas. It is precisely because I know that the opportunity to read is not easy to come by, and when the teachers teach hard, the students have taken out twelve points of spiritual hard reading.
In order to learn more solidly, they chose the most stupid and practical method - memorizing, memorizing wrong questions, memorizing knowledge points, and memorizing the notes explained by the teacher. Even if it is irrelevant in textbooks, they memorize it.
There are too many things to memorize, there is not enough time, just read until twelve o'clock after the evening self-study, all the holidays, winter and summer vacations, all used by them to study.
Although they did not have one percent talent, they made up for the shortcomings with ninety-nine percent of their sweat. The results they have achieved have also been remarkable. Since the establishment of the school, huaping women's high school has gone out more than 2,000 college students. Such a progression rate is higher than many key high schools with the best educational resources.
While forcing students to study hard, Zhang Guimei also saw the particularity of these students.
They were born into poor families and were treated as commodities by their parents. The most they hear is: You are worthless. Even they themselves felt useless.
Zhang Guimei saw the cowardice and humility in the hearts of the students, so she wrote a school motto and led them to shout in the morning sun: I was born a mountain rather than a stream, I want to look down on the mediocre ravine at the top of the peaks; I was born a master instead of a grass, and I stood on the shoulders of a great man to despise the lowly coward.
Shouting fierce and high slogans, the seeds of self-confidence also sprouted in the hearts of female high school students, and this self-confidence supported them through many difficulties.
It is also Zhang Guimei's encouragement that these female high school students can realize that they are a complete person, not just a daughter who works hard for her parents, a wife who is casually scolded by her husband, and a mother who dedicates her life to her children.
It is precisely because I want students to be independent and self-reliant, so when I learned that a student became a full-time wife after graduation, Zhang Guimei, who has always loved students, was rarely angry.
She said that she sent her students out to let them do their own business, so that they could get rid of the fate of being dependent on others.
The student had a hard time going out, but chose to return to the predicament, which made Zhang Guimei feel sad. Not only did she refuse to see her, but her husband's donations were also refused.
Virtue, intelligence, physical beauty, virtue is in front. Zhang Guimei taught them knowledge, and more importantly, she established the correct three views for these female students who had nothing.
In order to give back to Mr. Zhang, many students return to the school with their first salary after going out; some students want to return to their alma mater to teach after graduation. Love is passed down from generation to generation, Teacher Zhang's efforts, they remember in their hearts, but also want to make a little contribution to the students who have the same disease.
However, Zhang Guimei did not allow it. If there are student donations, she will return them, and if some students want to come back, she will discourage them.
She said: What to do with such a heavy burden, once you leave, you can't look back, do whatever you want, don't think about me all the time.
In order to let the children fly higher and go further, Zhang Guimei once again became a vicious teacher who forced students to study hard, and she formulated a school rule: after graduation, she is not allowed to return to school.
The students did not go back, they shone on the stage of life.
At this time, if someone asks them: What do you think of hard learning? They may only say: Never forget Teacher Zhang, who holds a loudspeaker to urge him to learn.
Doing the right thing in the right place, Zhang Guimei's concept makes many children in the greenhouse unacceptable, but for poor students who have no resources, no talent, and no background, hard learning is the only way for them, and it is also the best way to go.
More importantly, in addition to the children's "hard learning" on this road, there is also Zhang Guimei's "hard heart" for decades.