Vietnamese Teachers' Day, thank you dear students

Every day when standing on the podium, looking into the students' clear eyes and thinking 'I wonder what tricks they're up to today', we smile...

Teachers and students of Hung Vuong High School, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City on the occasion of November 20 - Photo: NHU HUNG

Every school year, when November comes, in schools from big to small, from urban to rural, from highlands to islands... teachers and students are busy with flower arranging, sports, and art activities... to celebrate the biggest Teachers' Day of the year: November 20, a day whose theme is always mentioned and honored, which is "gratitude".

We often think "one-sidedly" that students are grateful to teachers, because teachers are the ones who take care of, teach, guide them, and equip them with knowledge for life...

But sometimes we do not notice one thing, right when the students are busy with those exciting activities to turn to their teachers, then in a corner of the school, in a corner of the classroom, or in a corner of a school hallway, or sometimes under a stone bench near a tree in the sunny school yard... are eyes looking at them with gentle, simple but also very quiet smiles... That is the teacher, the teacher with an indescribable feeling of gratitude towards his students out there.

We are grateful to you for the white shirts you are wearing, grateful for the long dresses that seem to flutter in the school yard. That color of the dress, it is not as bright as the colors of life, but it is pure, it covers something beautiful, fragile, weak that we are afraid it will fade and tarnish. A color of the dress that when it is still in this school yard, we must try our best to protect it.

We are grateful for the laughter, the groups of three or five children under the old royal poinciana tree playing shuttlecock, jumping rope, studying, and chasing each other with loud screams that make our heads want to explode.

We are grateful for the speechless pranks when students hide the math teacher's ruler so he can't draw the board, so that he can't give difficult math problems that day, all kinds of ways to kill time to finish the class quickly, or hide the "iron board" of the "homeroom teacher" who is both old and fierce.

Students of Tan Phong High School, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City presented flowers to congratulate their teacher on Vietnamese Teachers' Day November 20, 2022 - Photo: NHU HUNG

Grateful for the frowning, angry faces of the students when they were scolded for not knowing history lessons, not knowing a poem, not remembering a continent in geography. Grateful for the "indignant" eyes of the students when the whole class was punished by standing for the entire period because of being noisy, for copying, for hiding the workbook...

Grateful for the extreme antics of the students when they smeared "cat's eyes" on the teacher's desk, deflated the tires, broke the handlebars of the most notorious teacher in school, or hid the monitor's drumstick so he wouldn't beat the drum until the end of recess, so that "we" could play a little longer... or "cut class" together with all sorts of extremely "legitimate" reasons, or "transformed" into eyes full of "innocence" to the point of "pity" when they stole the plate of sticky rice cake on the ancestral altar during the Hung King's death anniversary when the principal hadn't had time to light the incense yet...

Be grateful for the "unique" love that students have for their teachers, like the innocent question of a 6th grade girl to her physical education teacher just because she saw him "hugging" her "idol" homeroom teacher during a dance performance by teachers during the school's traditional festival: "How dare you hug my homeroom teacher?!!!".

You know, that was "us" at thirteen, fifteen, seventeen years old... full of innocence, carefree, full of mischief and many times made our teachers "unable to react".

And now, we are grateful because it is in you that our childhood comes back, thanks to you, we live our childhood again, especially for teachers who lived through the time when the country was still at war, when every day going to school was full of worries, always afraid that their students would step on landmines on the dirt roads, on the fields on the way to school, afraid that they would get their books wet when crossing streams, rivers that flowed like waterfalls, sitting in class while teachers and students were nervous because of the sound of fighter planes flying overhead...! Then nervous when every day going to class to check the roll call to see if the number of students was still enough, was there anyone "missing"?...

Towards the end of the school year, every time we passed by the school gate - that lifeless iron gate, we "hated" it so much, because it separated "childhood" and "life", because we knew, in just a few short days, our students, the white shirts we tried so hard to protect, would fly out of that door, to blend into the colors of life with many storms, many temptations that could tarnish the pure white of twelve years of studying, but also full of opportunities to experience, to grow up...

We are grateful for all the emotions that you have brought us. That is what has helped us overcome all the joys and sorrows of the teaching profession, helped us bravely overcome the numbness in our feet from standing too long, overcome the drowsiness, sometimes even blurred vision from staying up all night grading papers, preparing lesson plans, overcome all the pressure of inspections and periodic tests, overcome the jealousy and envy of colleagues, overcome dozens of kilometers of hills and deep rivers to get to school on time, overcome the regulations and constraints of the industry and school that we have to follow because of the standards of the teaching profession, overcome the "rules" that society sets for us...

But even so, every day when we stand on the podium and look into their clear eyes and think "I wonder what tricks they're up to today", we smile...

Because of all that, I hope all of you will live, learn, be happy, be sad, cry, and then smile brightly for our student years, for our white-shirt days, the days that once gone will never come back.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/ngay-nha-giao-viet-nam-cam-on-tuoi-hoc-tro-thuong-men-20241119101304381.htm