Story about a teacher who used her own money to give gifts to students on November 20
Báo Dân trí•20/11/2024
(Dan Tri) - Waiting for gifts from the teacher becomes an indescribable joy for the students of Ms. Trinh Thi Lien's class - Xa Dan Secondary School, Hanoi. The feeling of knowing they have gifts makes every holiday truly a festival for the children.
"Teacher, please save me, teacher, please save me", a little girl panicked and ran from the classroom to the hallway, grabbing the teacher's hand. The teacher turned around and comforted her: "Teacher, I'm here, no one will hurt My. My, go into the classroom and sit well and wait for me. When I come in, I'll sit with you." The little girl kept begging for "teacher, please save me" a few more times, her cries for help gradually softened, and she calmed down, then she let go of the teacher's hand and returned to the classroom. My sat at the last desk. The class had only more than 10 students. Each student was absorbed in their homework, not paying too much attention to her friend's unusual actions. In one day, My could have so many paranoid episodes like that, so everyone was used to it. Moreover, at this school, normal, healthy students saw her disability as just another difference. The teacher was not My's homeroom teacher. She only came to help manage the class. Her class also had a few autistic students like My with different disorders. Normally, the harder a teacher works, the more support they receive, both spiritually and materially, from parents. But that is not true for the teachers at this school. It is even more so for the teacher My called for help from. Because she is famous among generations of parents for giving gifts to her students on every holiday, including November 20. She is Trinh Thi Lien - an integration teacher at Xa Dan Secondary School, Hanoi. Le Khanh Hai, an 8A student at Xa Dan Secondary School, is a former student of Ms. Lien. Even though he hasn't studied with her for 3 years, Hai still receives gifts from her on special occasions. The most recent time, when he brought home his achievements from the TIMO international math competition, Ms. Lien gave him a pair of headphones. Before that, it was a box of superhero puzzles that he loved. When he was in primary school, Hai said he would never forget the feeling of waiting for her gifts on every opening ceremony, November 20, Tet, March 8, and the last day of school before summer vacation. Waiting for her to print each small name label with funny shapes to stick on pencils, rulers, and books for each classmate. Waiting for a notebook with a superhero. Waiting for a new pen with his name engraved on it. Girls waiting for hairpins. Boys waiting for Lego. On November 20, waiting for milk tea that she made herself. At the end of the school year, we look forward to the photo diary that she took, printed, and wrote loving words about each person in the class. "Those are the gifts that we can guess. But there are many gifts that we can't guess. So we are very excited to see what she will give us," Hai said. Waiting for gifts has become an indescribable joy for Ms. Lien's students. The feeling of knowing they have a gift, but not knowing what it is, makes every holiday at school truly an anticipated festival for the children. Ms. Lien also looks forward to those holidays, to give gifts to her nearly twenty children at school, to see their happy faces, to hear their joyful sounds when receiving the gifts. She usually prepares gifts a week before the holiday. If she has to make hair bows, headbands, bracelets for the girls, she will prepare them a month in advance. Sometimes her daughters also have to roll up their sleeves to help their mother. She has three children to educate, and her family's financial situation is not very good. When asked where she gets the money to buy gifts for her students on a few holidays a year, she smiled and said: "I always hunt for discounted items online." When she sees discounted school supplies or discounted toys, she buys them, because there will always be a time when she needs to give them. Knowing that the kids love drinking milk tea, she finds the ingredients and recipes and makes it herself. Sometimes, she treats the whole class to a fancy meal by ordering from a "hot" milk tea shop, so the kids can also "catch the snack trend" like everyone else. Ms. Tran Hanh Nhan, a former parent of Ms. Lien, said that in the 5 years her child studied with her, the class fund was always surplus even though the tuition was only a few hundred thousand dong. She paid for most of the students' activities in class with her own money instead of using the fund. If the class had a party, she would make and prepare a lot of food and drinks for the children. Ms. Lien said that buying gifts for students does not cost much. When the children received gifts, which she personally prepared for each student, they would be very happy. "Seeing the children happy makes me happy too. Holidays are for both teachers and students," Ms. Lien laughed, a little embarrassed that her giving gifts to students was considered special. An inclusive class at Xa Dan Secondary School usually has less than 20 students. The proportion of disabled students in the class is about 10-30%. There are few, sometimes 2, many, sometimes 6-7. Teaching requires deep differentiation. The cognitive gap between disabled students is different. The gap between disabled students and normal students is even more different. Not to mention, teaching 1 disabled student is equivalent to teaching 5 students. A class period is only 40-45 minutes maximum. How to make all students achieve goals appropriate to their abilities is not an easy problem. "Usually, I have to divide the amount of knowledge into smaller parts. Each student receives a different amount of knowledge corresponding to his or her ability. At the same time, I train class officers who are students with better learning abilities to become my active teaching assistants. When the teacher asks for help, the students are very enthusiastic. They learn very quickly. I set an example, the students observe and imitate, then go help their friends. Not only in studying but also in all activities at school. The children all know how to take care of each other very well," Ms. Lien shared. However, the workload of a teacher at a special school is always overloaded. Many times Ms. Lien felt helpless because she did not know how to handle situations that arose related to her students. Each year, there were nearly twenty children, and each child's problem was different from another child's. Every five years, returning to grade 1 to welcome a new batch of students, she had to face new problems, erase many experiences, and learn from scratch. But pressure was absolutely not the reason why she intended to leave four times. Of those four times, she submitted her application twice, and once she tried teaching at a new school. The reason was sometimes personal, sometimes it was the desire for a change in her career, wanting to test herself in a different environment to see how far her abilities could go. But she never left successfully. Ms. Lien said that in 2013, after giving birth to her third child, many family pressures made her fall into depression, feeling unable to continue working at the school. However, sometimes parents called to ask when she would return to teach, and students also texted to ask when she would return to school. Those calls and messages made Ms. Lien reluctant to let go. "Some students find it very difficult to get used to. If they have to switch to a new teacher, it will take them a long time to get used to it all over again. Some students are making progress little by little, and their parents are full of hope that their children will progress further. Thinking about their parents' hopes, I can't bear it. I have to go back and continue my unfinished work. The idea of moving away gradually fades away," Ms. Lien confided. Choosing to stay also means choosing to face it. Not all parents cooperate with teachers. Many parents cannot accept the truth about their children's condition. They still think that their children are only temporarily disturbed and will change and get better. Convincing parents to accept and accompany their children long-term, with consistent care and teaching methods from school to home is difficult and does not always result in an agreement. Ms. Lien, like other teachers in the school, also has to learn to accept such things. For other schools, their goal is to have many excellent students, many national and international awards. For Xa Dan School, the teachers' goal here is for students to develop normally. Ms. Lien said: "Achieving those two words 'normal' is a great happiness, very very great". Especially as a special school for deaf and mute students and other types of disabilities to study and integrate, teachers here do not consider the students' graduation as the end of their mission. They also have to follow the students' entire journey afterwards, sometimes their entire life. Ms. Lien had a student who was secondary deaf after a serious illness at the age of 3. When she accepted him into first grade, he hardly cooperated with anyone, often tearing up his books. A child who was hearing and speaking normally suddenly lost contact with the world of sound, causing him to be deeply hurt, giving rise to a strong reaction towards his parents and teachers. But with patience, Ms. Lien gradually helped the little girl get used to her condition, guiding her to believe that everything would be fine without sound. Ms. Lien's student overcame the crisis, studied well, became a university student, got a job, got married and had children. But then an incident happened, her partner suddenly passed away, she became a widow, life once again challenged her like the loss of her childhood sounds. "As for me, I can't help her like when she was young, sitting in a small classroom at Xa Dan school. I can only say words of comfort and encouragement from afar," Ms. Lien choked up. So, as Ms. Lien said, in this place, even normalcy and peace are a big ambition. Ms. Lien was born in 1978, graduated from the preschool education department of Hanoi National University of Education. She used to be a special person, not fond of communication, had no friends. Even when she graduated, even though she was offered a good job, she didn't dare accept it. She didn't believe she could stand on the podium in front of dozens of students and teach them. Ms. Lien decided to work for the youth union in the ward. 3 years of working for the union changed the pedagogical bachelor into a different person. Being forced to communicate and work with children made her discover new abilities and determine what her true passion was. She returned to teaching, where she thought she would have the most meaning, Xa Dan Secondary School. Ms. Lien's path to teaching was not a straight one and she tried to turn to another path many times. But the pull of the "normal" aspiration is still keeping her here.
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