Share "value" and experience "empathy"
The growth path of a rural "green pepper"
When participating in the "Green Pepper Project" in 2020, young teacher Li Yaping had a very simple wish: to travel to Beijing.
"Green Pepper Plan" is an Internet education public welfare project launched by Youcheng Foundation and Beijing Normal University in 2017. It provides a one-year training course for newly recruited young teachers in rural areas.
Students can earn points by listening to lectures, interacting, and completing homework on an app. If the points reach the top 100, they can become "100 Excellent Students".
Li Yaping was born in Guizhou, the governor of Guizhou, and finished university in Guizhou Province, never leaving the province.
When she heard that she could go to Beijing to study as a "Baiyou Student", she made up her mind: she must become one of the 100 people with the highest points.
At that time, Li Yaping, a graduate of the Department of Mathematics, had just arrived at Wukong Primary School in Leishan County, Guizhou Province, and became a "new" rural teacher.
She is facing professional confusion.
That year, three or four hours a week of live webcast classes inadvertently changed her life.
first-time frustration
The situation facing Li Yaping is not a good one: she teaches the sixth grade of elementary school, and the students can't even do basic addition and subtraction, and the average score in mathematics is only 9 points.
The parents of the students don't seem to pay attention to their children's learning either. They send their children to school and don't care about the rest.
In this village primary school, there are only 8 teachers in the whole school. Li Yaping is sometimes a physical education teacher, and sometimes a math, moral, labor, and science teacher.
The new teachers on the podium are always full of enthusiasm, and Li Yaping is determined to do everything possible to improve the students' grades.
In addition to class, she takes advantage of breaks to watch students memorize multiplication formulas and practice addition and subtraction.
Almost all of her time is spent with students, but to her dismay, their grades have not improved significantly.
Moreover, she felt that her parents did not seem to appreciate her efforts.
Frustration surrounds the young teacher.
When she first came to the podium, Li Yaping believed that her duty was to give good lessons and help students improve their grades.
But in the countryside, these alone are not enough.
Li Yaping did not expect that the "home-school co-education" course offered by the "Green Pepper Plan" helped her find the "correct way to open up" rural teachers.
Li Yaping takes photos and videos of students every day and sends them to the class group according to the method she learned in this class, and calls parents from time to time to chat about their children's daily life.
The parents of most students in Wukong Primary School are not around. The children live with their grandparents. Sometimes the elderly are reluctant to pay for the call, and the children do not have many opportunities to meet and chat with their parents.
In the past, teachers called parents, often because the child made a mistake or got bad grades.
Li Yaping took the initiative to share the details of the child's growth with the parents: the child helped her to carry things, sweeping the floor very hard, writing well...
One day, a little girl ran over and asked Li Yaping, the head teacher, "Teacher, did you call my father?"
The little girl's father is working outside. Li Yaping did call him recently: "Yes, what did my father say to you?"
The little girl was a little embarrassed. Li Yaping followed her outside the classroom, and the little girl whispered to her: "Dad said that I study very hard, and I will continue to work hard in the future."
For left-behind children, their parents are both close and unfamiliar.
They long for the love and approval of their parents, and a simple compliment is enough to make the children happy.
Through communicating with parents, she also gradually understood why local parents don't seem to care about their children's learning - in the eyes of parents, teachers are "educational authorities", sending children to schools, everything is obeyed by teachers.
"Taking a video" has also become an opportunity for children to strive for. They know that if they behave well, Teacher Li will take pictures of themselves and send them to their parents.
Every time a video is taken, Li Yaping also asks the children to say a few words to their parents.
Li Yaping began to feel that she was not only a teacher, but also a link between parents and children.
Confusion on the line
In her first year of work, Li Yaping had to play the role of a "student" in addition to classes.
Liu Shujing, the person in charge of the "Green Pepper Plan", said that the course covers almost all subjects in the three stages of preschool, primary school and junior high school, as well as teacher ethics and pedagogy theory basic courses.
The courses are scheduled from 7:00 to 8:00 pm from Monday to Saturday night, and there are three or four live broadcast rooms at the same time almost every night.
In those nights, Li Yaping actively listened to lectures, interacted, completed homework, and scored points.
After one year, she got her wish and became a "Baiyou Student", walking out of Guizhou and coming to Beijing for the first time.
In Li Yaping's mind, "research" equals "tourism", and she left her studies behind. She was excited like a child, talking and laughing along the way.
But in that research activity, there was a scene that impressed Li Yaping deeply and also confused her.
During a sharing event, Liu Shujing burst into tears as she told some stories.
The things Liu Shujing told were so ordinary to Li Yaping that she didn't even remember what they said.
After that, Li Yaping kept asking herself: Teacher Shujing is doing charity work. I have seen many of these things, so why do you still cry?
This question has always bothered her.
Li Yaping does not like to cry. In her memory, she has never cried except when her mother died.
After "graduating" from the Green Pepper Project, Li Yaping decided to stay in the project to find answers.
While Li Yaping was looking for answers, He Qigang and his team members were preparing a new course.
He Qigang is the director of the Supervision Office of the Education Bureau of Tianyuan District, Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, and has participated in the "Green Pepper Project" for 5 years.
He Qigang participated in this public welfare project, hoping to "really solve problems for front-line teachers".
Taking into account everyone's actual situation, He Qigang does not want the class to be a burden for the students.
To achieve this goal, He Qigang and his team put a lot of thought into designing courses.
He Qigang was born as an English teacher. Later, he studied information technology "cross-border" and taught information technology classes for the students of the "Green Pepper Project".
However, these professional skills are too difficult for ordinary teachers, and it is not realistic for everyone to spend two or three days doing PPT and video.
He Qigang wanted to help teachers apply these technologies to teaching, so he began to study "minimalist information technology", teaching teachers to use free applications and small programs to make a video in a few minutes.
He Qigang and his team members developed a "Modern Minimalist Educational Technology Course". He also sorted out "60-second Micro-Strategies" and "Minimalist Tips" and printed them into booklets at his own expense and sent them to the "Green Pepper" students.
The efforts of He Qigang and his partners also received positive responses from young teachers.
In the past few years in the "Green Pepper Project" class, He Qigang has always met students who moved him: a female teacher was about to give birth and still insisted on listening to the class; a male teacher's child was sick and had a high fever, and he accompanied him in the hospital. Children, while watching the live broadcast of the graduation ceremony of the "Green Pepper Project".
After participating in the "Green Pepper Project", He Qigang encountered "people of the same size" from time to time: some "Green Pepper" students did not want He Qigang to post money to print brochures, and sent him a transfer of 100 yuan, 200 yuan or even 1,000 yuan. .
When He Qigang read Einstein's biography, he saw an impressive detail.
Einstein said, I don't want to be a successful person, I want to be a valuable person.
Others are a little curious.
Einstein explained that successful people gain more, gain fame, fortune, and honor; become a valuable person, others can get it from me.
He Qigang said that he has been doing public welfare courses on the Internet these years, and it is this sentence that inspires him to this day.
Pass the dream turn
In places that the students can't see, the implementers of the "Green Pepper Project" try to make this project more suitable for the needs of young teachers and more useful.
This project born from the Internet has strong Internet characteristics in itself.
Words such as "community operation" that are common in "Dachang" are also high-frequency words in the discourse of the operators of "Green Pepper Plan".
Liu Shujing even believes that community operation is one of the biggest highlights of the Green Pepper Project.
They set up a "district and county group", which brought together the current students from the same district and county; and also set up a subject group, where teachers of the same subject can exchange teaching experience.
In order to enhance the interaction of beneficiary teachers, they also need to find ways to plan themed activities to "stir up the field" - this is also a typical Internet "slang".
In the 1970s, some scholars put forward the concept of "knowledge gap" and "digital gap". They observed that with the emergence of modern technology and digital technology, the gap between rich and poor, between urban and rural areas, between young and old gradually emerged. A "chasm" that further widens the original gap between the two.
In 2020, the Huawei WeLink team also joined the "Green Pepper Project". In addition to providing a free class platform for lecturers and students, they also developed customized functions for this project, such as the recording of activities such as lectures, assignments, and interactions.
"We hope to promote 'digital inclusion' and not let one person be left behind in the digital world, and the Green Pepper Project is one of the practices of 'digital inclusion'," said team leader Wang Jun.
Most of the students of the "Green Pepper Project" live in remote areas and have difficulty accessing high-quality teaching resources. With this free platform, they can easily access the distant world.
Special post teachers like Li Yaping all work in remote areas, and individual teachers have lowered their requirements for themselves due to lack of supervision in their work.
But Li Yaping did not dare to slack off.
In July this year, Li Yaping went out of Guizhou for the second time and went to Chengdu to participate in the "Green Pepper Project" seed teacher training class.
She was surprised to find that other "green pepper" students were so powerful: some had obtained national certificates, some had published books, and some had been teachers in Confucius Institutes...
Li Yaping's students are also making progress little by little. In the final exam last semester, the whole class's grades have exceeded the county's average score.
There was a girl whose math scores were hovering on the pass line before, but she scored more than 90 points in the exam for the junior high school.
Also in July of this year, Li Yaping seemed to have found the answer to that question.
In the sharing activity, she told the story of her work, and other teachers were in tears.
Listening to other people's stories, she was touched and couldn't help tearing up.
She knew that she had acquired the ability to "empathize".
In the new school year, Li Yaping once again applied to be a teaching assistant.
In the group of "Green Pepper Project", she felt that she was "tolerated and pampered by everyone" and "through everyone's smiles, she knew that I was also very good".
She wants to pass on her gains from the "Green Pepper Project".
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Li Yajuan Source: China Youth Daily
September 19, 2022 Edition 05