City teacher goes to Mu Cang Chai to teach English

Unimaginable differences

Mu Cang Chai district has 16 primary schools but only one school has an English teacher. To teach English to grade 3 students at least 4 periods/week according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, Yen Bai province has dispatched dozens of teachers to Mu Cang Chai to help temporarily overcome this situation.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Thu tutors English for 3rd grade students after class has ended.

At Khao Mang Primary Boarding School (Mu Cang Chai District), we met Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Thu, an English teacher at Nguyen Du Secondary School (Yen Bai City, Yen Bai Province), who was assigned by the Provincial People's Committee to teach English to primary school students.

After nearly 4 months of "staying in the village", Ms. Thu shared that this was also her first time coming to Mu Cang Chai. The day she went to receive her assignment, she was so carsick that she almost fainted when she reached the school. Up to now, although she visits home every weekend, she still has not been able to "quit" the motion sickness medication.

On the first day of arriving in Mu Cang Chai, receiving a room rented by the school, Ms. Thu said: "The school tried very hard to choose a solid house and renovate it, but when I entered the house, I was still... shocked because it was a level 4 house with a cement roof, dirt floor, and nothing inside except a personal bed. The same went for the others, so on the first night, almost none of the 10 seconded teachers could sleep, they texted each other to ease the fear, emptiness and homesickness."

However, Ms. Thu said she was still luckier than some of her other colleagues because they lived in a more remote school, their accommodation was only covered with planks, and in winter the wind still blew from all sides, making them cold to the bone.

But after 2-3 weeks, the seconded teachers gradually got used to it. Thanks to the cuteness of the students and the sincere help of their colleagues in the highlands, they were able to adapt to life and work here. However, they still couldn’t get used to missing home and their husbands and children.

Ms. Thu also has a daughter who is in grade 12, preparing to enter university, so she really needs her mother to be there to encourage and support her... so even though she gets carsick, every week she takes the bus home on Friday afternoon and then packs up and goes back to school on Sunday afternoon.

Thanks to the loveliness of the students and the sincerity of their colleagues in the highlands, the seconded teachers gradually adapted to life and work.

Ms. Thu confided that she had heard and read about the difficult lives of students in the highlands, but when she arrived there, she realized that what she had imagined was nothing compared to reality. "I felt it, but I was still surprised by one thing after another, because the hardships and deprivation of the students were beyond my imagination," Ms. Thu said.

Change yourself for students

Nearly 70% of students at Khao Mang Primary Boarding School live dozens of kilometers away from school, so they stay at school, are picked up by their parents on Friday afternoons and walk home, then go to school again on Sunday afternoons.

Ms. Thu said, witnessing the students from grade 1, small in stature but very resilient and independent, the seconded teacher also told herself to try to adapt to life here.

Because most of the children are ethnic minorities, when they enter primary school, many of them do not speak Mandarin fluently, so it is very difficult for them to approach English. Ms. Thu is teaching at the secondary school level in the city, where students have been learning English since grade 1, so she has to make great efforts to change her teaching methods to suit the psychology of their age and their ability to absorb.

Students learn but do not get to practice, so teachers have to teach over and over again so that they can learn with certainty, instead of demanding advanced knowledge or "running" the program as quickly as in urban areas. "Teachers have to lower their standards, teach very slowly, find easier lessons in the textbooks and constantly encourage students so they don't get discouraged," Ms. Thu shared.

If she taught each class, Ms. Thu would have to teach 40 periods/week, so 10 classes had to be combined into 6 to teach 24 periods/week (the norm is 21 periods/week). Because she could not combine any more because it would affect the quality of teaching and learning, Ms. Thu agreed to teach extra hours.

"The time of the teacher's assignment is one school year. We always encourage each other to try to overcome difficulties, complete tasks, contribute to reducing difficulties in education in the highlands, and help mountainous students to be less disadvantaged compared to their friends in the city," Ms. Thu confided.

Mr. Nguyen Anh Thuy, Head of the Department of Education and Training of Mu Cang Chai District, said: from the 2022-2023 school year, English will be a compulsory subject for students from grade 3, but the whole district has only 1 school with an English teacher. Many years ago, the district recruited but no one applied. Therefore, the People's Committee of Yen Bai province sent 9 teachers from the lowlands to teach grade 3. This school year, 10 teachers will be sent to teach both grade 3 and grade 4.

Because there is not enough 1 teacher per school, the Department of Education and Training has to arrange for 10 teachers to teach all classes of 16 primary schools by combining online teaching within one school or between one school and another. The inter-school teaching solution is difficult to implement because teaching only 1 school will overload the teachers.

"The Yen Bai Department of Education and Training is coordinating with the Departments of Education and Training of Hanoi and Nam Dinh to support online English teaching for Yen Bai students. We have registered to implement this program. In the long term, we propose that the province provide training addresses to have a source of teachers for the highlands. Yen Bai is also cooperating with Thai Nguyen University to train 50 more English teachers, hoping to solve difficulties for highland districts such as Mu Cang Chai," Mr. Thuy shared.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/co-giao-thanh-pho-len-mu-cang-chai-day-tieng-anh-185231219203104825.htm