In recent years, with the increase in poverty alleviation efforts, the rural infrastructure has been continuously improved, and policies such as job title evaluation and salary subsidies have been tilted towards rural teachers. The external environment for rural teachers to teach at the grassroots level has been continuously improved.
The reporter found in the interview that compared with salary and working conditions, conflicts in educational concepts, lagging management models, and some parents' lack of cooperation with school education are the reasons that hinder young people from staying in the countryside to teach.
How to create a working atmosphere that allows young teachers to use their talents and let them gain a sense of professional accomplishment in the practice of rural education is an issue that should be paid more attention to in the next step.
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After working in a central elementary school in a town in Hubei for nearly two years, the post-95 girl Ling Yuxin decided to leave.
In early May of this year, she participated in the recruitment written test of urban schools, and couldn't wait for the results of the written test. While working, she started preparing for the interview in advance.
Rural schools’ failure to retain young teachers is not an exception. At the Yushan Town Central Primary School in Linshu County, Shandong Province, “more than 20 passed the exam last year.” said Ding Haixing, the principal of Yushan Town Central Primary School. He works in this school. In the past 23 years, we have witnessed the arrival and departure of groups of young teachers. Most of them passed the county selection examination and entered the county school to work.
"Our village and township primary schools here have all the infrastructure facilities that should be available, but the location is too remote, it is still difficult to attract talents, and it is even more difficult to retain talents." Ding Haixing attributed the reason for not being able to retain teachers to geographical location. Of remoteness.
In recent years, with the increase in poverty alleviation efforts, the rural infrastructure has been continuously improved, and policies such as job title evaluation and salary subsidies have been tilted towards rural teachers. The external environment for rural teachers to teach at the grassroots level has been continuously improved.
The reporter found in the interview that compared with salary and working conditions, conflicts in educational concepts, lagging management models, and some parents' lack of cooperation with school education are the reasons that hinder young people from staying in the countryside to teach.
Some rural school’s music, sports and beauty teachers lack a sense of presence
"I entered as an art teacher, but I never took an art class." After graduating from University in 2019, Ling Yuxin came to a central elementary school in a town in Hubei with a good yearning for the future.
She majored in digital media art at university. She hoped to give full play to her professional expertise and teach art knowledge to children in the countryside.
But when she came here, she discovered that the school did not offer art classes at all.
However, due to the lack of teachers in the school, she was arranged to be a mathematics teacher, as well as a part-time assistant teacher of science and morality.
In addition to art classes, minor subjects such as music and psychology are also forcibly canceled. “Physical education may only take about one session a week.” Students can only take math, science, and calligraphy from Monday to Friday.
Ling Yuxin was anxious without art class.
She believes that art, music and other minor education are indispensable. These courses can not only help students correctly understand beauty and give them an enlightenment to beauty, but also help students ease the stressful learning atmosphere and adjust the pace of learning.
For this reason, Ling Yuxin had specifically applied to the principal to be a full-time art teacher.
Although the current work is busy enough, she still hopes to give each class an art class.
But not surprisingly, she was rejected.
"The schools in the whole town only fancy their grades." Ling Yuxin said that for midterm and final exams in each semester, the school will be ranked according to the comprehensive grades of the class. , Forcing all teachers to keep up with their grades.
For the sake of achievement, Ling Yuxin feels like a spinning top that keeps spinning every day.
Early self-study starts at 7:10 in the morning. Some school bus students need to leave at 5:30 to catch up with the morning self-study. Sleep is not guaranteed.
"Students' performance is not good, the school will extend class time, cancel all sub-subjects, the effect is worse, but the school just thinks that this can improve grades." Ling Yuxin is very helpless with the school's education method.
Liu Rui was also troubled by Ling Yuxin.
He is a junior student majoring in musicology at Qufu Normal University. In early March 2021, he came to a rural elementary school in Xiaoyun Town, Jinxiang County, Jining City, Shandong Province for an internship.
He became an elementary school music teacher as he wished, and as the only music teacher in this elementary school, he needs to be responsible for all music courses for grades one to five.
Before he did his internship, even if the school offered music classes, the main subject teachers were part-time music teachers, who only taught singing and never taught music theory.
Liu Rui still remembers the experience of giving these children music lessons for the first time.
Before the class, he carefully prepared the lesson PPT, audio, video, musical notation and some simple percussion instruments.
But he discovered in class that the students didn't even have a music textbook.
He wrote the most basic notes of "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si" on the blackboard, and when he turned his head, the students looked at him blankly.
"Teacher, I won't." This is the most common sentence students say in class.
For these students who have no musical foundation at all, the knowledge of music theory is "fresh stuff".
It became the norm for them in class.
"I can't let them be in a daze. If they don't, they have to learn." Faced with this situation, Liu Rui began to slowly guide the students to follow him to learn some simple musical gestures, let the students participate in the classroom interaction, and encourage them to learn more. Build their initiative and self-confidence in learning.
Music teaching has just achieved some success, but the class can’t go on.
The main subject teachers occupy music classes to attend classes. The music classes that used to be only one week a week, after being occupied, become courses that only exist on the curriculum schedule.
When the mid-term and final exams are due, the school will cancel the music class directly.
"Because it is a village, the school does not attach importance to art education." As a music teacher, Liu Rui's sense of existence is somewhat low.
Parents who don’t cooperate make it a headache
Fortunately, Liu Rui’s students have made him feel the happiness of being a teacher. He is always happy to share the latest developments of the students on his QQ space, sometimes it is a video, sometimes it is a picture, and each dynamic is equipped with more than 100 words. Between the lines, the love for these village children is revealed.
But Ling Yuxin was not as lucky as him.
As a class teacher, she often has to deal with many "Sting'ertou" students and "Sting'ertou" parents.
In the first year of work, some parents threatened to come to school to beat her.
Liu Ming, a fourth-grade student, often caused troubles at school, bullying classmates, spitting at classmates, writing on other people's clothes, and even stealing, extorting, and stealing money.
This time, he deliberately stepped on the arm of a classmate at school.
Ling Yuxin hates that iron can't make steel, so she decides to call Liu Ming's father to communicate the child's situation.
"If a slap doesn't make a sound, other students might bully my son too!" Liu Ming's father was not only unwilling to pay for the examination of injured students, but also blamed the teacher for improper management.
After being threatened by her parents, Ling Yuxin became dizzy and tried to communicate for 10 minutes to no avail. She hung up the phone, turned off the phone, and tried her best to calm herself down.
In desperation, Ling Yuxin had to contact Liu Ming's grandmother who was "a little more reasonable", and obtained 100 yuan for the inspection fee for the trampled students.
"Took teachers as babysitters. They didn't send their children to school for learning, but felt that they were sent to the school with food, drink, and some help." Ling Yuxin said that the local rural villages are popular in playing mahjong, and some do not. People who work, even if they have free time, will not spend their time on children's education, but on the mahjong table.
Some children in the village are either unsupervised or grow up in an atmosphere of "eating, drinking, playing mahjong".
During the interview, some young teachers were generally puzzled that the goal of controlling dropouts made teachers feel helpless in front of some particularly stubborn children.
Even if some students severely violated disciplines, teachers can only blindly "speak softly" education.
Some teachers are more strict with their children, and individual parents are reluctant, and even go to school to make a big noise, and the principal is just a peacemaker. This makes young teachers who are unfamiliar with the rural environment feel even more lack of a teacher. Dignity.
Young teachers value the school’s working atmosphere and sense of professional accomplishment
In March 2020, Jiang Xiaoyun transferred from a township primary school in Shanglin County, Nanning City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to another township primary school in the same township.
Speaking of the development of the school, Jiang Xiaoyun almost said without hesitation: “Lack of backbone teachers, old teachers are preparing to retire, and they are already experiencing job burnout.” There are only 13 teachers in her school, and nearly half of them are seniors who are about to retire. Teacher.
The lack of key teachers has a great impact on newly recruited young teachers.
Young teachers often have no teaching experience, but they have to "catch the ducks to the shelves" to start teaching tasks. Even in subjects that are not compatible with their majors, they cannot get help from older teachers.
They can only watch online teaching videos by themselves, sacrifice their rest time and write lesson plans repeatedly.
"If old teachers come to open classes, young teachers can learn more." However, Jiang Xiaoyun said that some old teachers are no longer willing to prepare and teach open classes. The idea of retire soon passed by in school.
Happily, Jiang Xiaoyun was promoted in April this year and she became the dean of the school.
After being promoted, she immediately took action, summarized the teaching work in a timely manner, standardized routine management, and organized teacher meetings to reflect on teaching and find out the problems in teaching.
In the face of teachers who are slack in their work, she is not polite at all, and will communicate directly with them, urging them to prepare lessons and change homework.
"If the superiors come to check and inquire, I will tell the truth about this phenomenon and will not condone their behavior." She said.
Fortunately, although there are some old teachers who are slack in their work, they do not have the teaching attitude of younger teachers.
Jiang Xiaoyun said that the young teachers in the school are "closely united", like a team, encouraging and urging each other, and sharing teaching experience with each other.
"Is the recent emotions wrong?" "Is the way of teaching not active enough?" "Will changing the homework like this help students' progress?" Young teachers love self-reflection and self-correction, and how to improve the quality of teaching is their goal .
"To be honest, our current teaching results are not good, and poor in the village, but we are determined to improve the quality of teaching." Jiang Xiaoyun said firmly.
In Jiang Xiaoyun's view, thanks to the support of the post-95 principal of the school, she can flex her muscles.
"He is very young and self-motivated. He never procrastinates in doing things. He does not push things to young teachers because of his high position." At the same time, the post-95 principal also pays much attention to the work and life of teachers and enthusiastically helps young teachers solve problems.
"It's not like a leader, it's more like a partner fighting side by side." Jiang Xiaoyun said, she was very grateful for the principal's support.
In their fight side by side, Jiang Xiaoyun saw the students' changes in real earnest.
During a home visit, Jiang Xiaoyun discovered a left-behind child whose parents divorced, who did not do homework, did not like to read, and had poor grades.
In the school, I was ignored by teachers who "dare not control".
Jiang Xiaoyun began to pay close attention to the child's situation, encouraged him to study seriously, and asked the child's grandparents to communicate with him more, buy him extracurricular books, and cultivate his interest in reading.
After receiving attention, Jiang Xiaoyun found that the child's condition had improved significantly.
In Jiang Xiaoyun's class, he began to correct his study attitude and completed his homework. In a mid-term exam, he scored 60 points for the first time.
"At that moment, there was a sense of accomplishment." Jiang Xiaoyun said, seeing students getting better is the happiest thing for me as a teacher.
As an orientation teacher student, Jiang Xiaoyun needs to work in a rural school for 6 years.
Regarding the future, Jiang Xiaoyun thought, she would still find a way to return to the county.
"I have to think about my future life." Jiang Xiaoyun felt that she met a "good principal" to achieve some results, but she didn't know what would happen in the future.
(At the request of the interviewee, Ling Yuxin, Jiang Xiaoyun, and Liu Rui are pseudonyms)
Yuan Xinyu Liang Langling China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Xie Yang Source: China Youth Daily