“Teaching here is very hard”
Nguyen Dinh Chieu Specialised School (Lien Chieu District, Da Nang City) currently has 53 teachers, caring for and educating more than 170 pupils with disabilities, covering all types of disability: visual impairments, hearing impairments, intellectual developmental delays, autism, mobility impairments and multiple disabilities. Teaching pupils here without a great loving heart and patient perseverance makes it hard to teach and stay with them for long.
Visiting the school, we met Ms Tran Thi Thanh Xuan, who has spent 13 years with the school. Ms Xuan teaches the slow-development class, the class that is the hardest and most tiring to teach and care for in the school. Her pupils have many types of disability: mobility impairments, hyperactivity, autism, cerebral palsy, slow development… A working day for her starts at 6:45 in the morning, and besides teaching, she must also teach and care for her pupils “in every little detail”. She teaches her pupils how to walk steadily, how to eat by themselves, how to dress, how to go to the toilet… Ms Xuan confided: “Teaching here is very hard. I once taught a child to hold a spoon and feed himself, and it took a year and a half, and then I taught a child to be aware of going to the toilet by himself, which took more than a year.”
In particular, there are also pupils who keep pushing their classmates over, biting them, and even biting the broom. Ms Xuan is always worrying about finding teaching methods suited to each type of pupil.
For Mr Do Trong Tu, a physical education teacher, being able to teach at Nguyen Dinh Chieu Specialised School is a stroke of luck for him. After finishing a teaching post in the mountains, he was assigned to the school by the Department of Education and Training in 2009.
“I never thought I would teach at a school for children with disabilities; I thought I would teach at a private school, because I had never been trained to teach the children here,” Mr Tu said.
His pupils also have many different types of disability. In his first year teaching at the school, he was very discouraged, not knowing how to approach the children; when he taught them, they did not listen. But he always researched teaching methods suited to each type of condition, and now he is very happy with his work. His joy is leading the children to compete in sports for people with disabilities nationwide and win high prizes. And once, his pupil with a visual impairment won first prize in football for people with visual impairments nationwide.
Unlike Ms Xuan and Mr Tu, who teach pupils with many different types of disability, Ms Bui Thi Diep Anh teaches only pupils with visual impairments. Ms Diep Anh has spent two years teaching Literature to pupils with visual impairments at the school. Pupils with visual impairments find it very difficult to access knowledge, and they do not have many Braille books to study from. Because her pupils learn Braille, Ms Diep Anh is always wondering how to find methods to help them master basic knowledge and apply it to many different kinds of exercises.
Minh Nhat, a pupil in Ms Diep Anh's class, learning to write in Braille.
Ms Diep Anh's eyes filled with tears as she recalled a memory with her pupil Minh Nhat. She remembers clearly that on 26/5/2011, she and Nhat went to the ceremony to award prizes to excellent pupils nationwide. At the ceremony there was a very fine dance performance by children, and after it ended, everyone applauded very loudly. And her pupil Minh Nhat asked her: “What are they clapping for, teacher?” These words have always lingered in her mind, and she loves the children even more. That is why she always tries to find teaching methods to help the children access knowledge more easily.
Always worrying about their pupils
The children at the school already have physical impairments, and most of them come from families in particularly difficult circumstances, and from far away. So the school must always seek funding for regular training.
Speaking with Ms Dang Thanh Tung, the school's deputy principal, she said the school's training motto is “New, and always renewing”. The school always learns new methods to improve the effectiveness of teaching the children. That means taking in and learning teaching methods from abroad. Every year the school sends teachers for regular training.
Ms Nguyen Thi Diem Thuy, a teacher of the slow-development class with 16 years at the school, shared that her class has 16 pupils, the largest number of any class in the school. The pupils in her class are children whose minds and actions are unusual, so finding ways to manage and teach them is a major issue. In the past, because she often had to shout at the children, she frequently suffered from a sore throat, and when she got home she could not eat, tears streaming down her face, because she did not know how to help her pupils learn and help herself teach better. Then she realised she had to coax them rather than keep shouting at them; surely she could not hit them just because she was too angry. Every day, she acts like a play, playing many different roles – sometimes grandparents, parents, sometimes older brothers and sisters… – to get close to the children, help them feel less tired, and make them interested in being at school. The children do not learn much, but just seeing them remember and write a letter makes her very happy.
As for Ms Tran Thi Thanh Thuy, a teacher of the class for pupils with hearing impairments, she is always learning and finding new ways to teach, such as applying visual education methods, using pictures and concrete objects so that pupils have a concrete image of what they have learned, and so the children understand more quickly.
“On 20 November, I did not receive a single flower or a single greeting from a pupil. Going home, I met other people on the street who are also teachers but with their arms full of flowers, and I felt sorry for myself. But my pupils are all children with visual impairments, each with a particularly difficult situation. Many times I have cried out of love for them, so how could I compare myself with other people?” – Ms Thanh Thuy confided.
Listening to the teachers of Nguyen Dinh Chieu Specialised School tell their stories, one sees that the teachers here are not only devoted and wholehearted about their profession, but also give all their love, strength and time to their less fortunate pupils. With daily patience and perseverance, the teachers have helped pupils with disabilities integrate into life. How admirable the hearts of the teachers here are!
Nguyen Duong – Dan Tri