Two Jiading residents, Zhou Fenglin and Zhao Xingzhou, had been honored by the Nationwide Poverty Alleviation Challenge in Beijing final month for his or her efforts to enhance schooling in rural areas. They’ve devoted themselves to assuaging poverty, bringing love, religion and hope to college students in poor elements of the nation and construct their confidence for progress which might be of immense profit to them of their future lives. Following are the tales of their private observe by way of academic assist.
Serving to children blossom like magnolia flowers
Zhou Fenglin (heart) was answerable for the second group of Shanghai lecturers who assisted in enhancing schooling in Xinjiang’s Kashgar Prefecture final yr.
When he talks concerning the kids in Kashgar Prefecture within the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Area, Zhou Fenglin all the time has a giant smile on his face. When his spouse despatched him photos of the magnolia flowers in Shanghai as he attended the nationwide poverty alleviation awards ceremony in Beijing, he instantly forwarded them to college students in Kashgar, noting that: “Magnolia, the flower of Shanghai, is as lovely as you.”
Zhou, 63, was a trainer at Jiading No. 2 Excessive College and had devoted himself to schooling for over 40 years. After he retired, he involved himself with schooling in distant areas and took the lead function within the second group of Shanghai lecturers to help in Xinjiang, a part of a volunteer educating program initiated by the Ministry of Schooling. He launched the “Magnolia Development” venture, taking a bunch of 220 lecturers to assist enhance schooling in Xinjiang final yr.
Zhou additionally took on the function of headmaster at Kashgar No. 6 Excessive College.
The setting of a faculty is significant to college students not solely as a result of a gorgeous exterior generally is a feast for the eyes, however it could actually additionally present wholesome situations for college students.
After arriving on the faculty, Zhou heard the scholars saying that earlier than you ask the place the restrooms are you will discover them by the disagreeable scent. Some may need regarded that as a joke, however Zhou took it critically.
“It was not their informal remarks however a real state of affairs. I felt aggrieved after I noticed the restrooms, so I contemplated what I might do to make modifications,” stated Zhou.
He later launched a “campus well being enchancment” venture to completely renovate the restrooms.
“Now I can say the restrooms are as clear as those in accommodations,” stated Yu Jiang, director of research on the faculty. “It was headmaster Zhou who utilized for the chance from our authorities to assist improve the setting, and he did all that on his personal.”
Zhou carried a sequence of different measures within the following months, together with constructing scorching water services for hand washing, improving two health-care rooms, including 17 water dispensers and giving lectures on oral well being, to offer a greater residing and research setting for college students. This made the kids like their headmaster much more because the modifications he caused had been these they might by no means have imagined.
A trainer on the faculty stated: “They’ve regularly developed the behavior of washing their palms after going to the bathroom and earlier than consuming, which ends up in a more healthy lifestyle. I consider it could actually profit them of their future lives.” It was extra vital to assist change college students’ attitudes towards life than simply upgrading {hardware} within the classroom, the trainer added.
Zhou shares the most recent expertise and knowledge with native lecturers and college students.
“Youngsters all the time requested me what the colleges seemed like in Shanghai, so I confirmed them photos. I might really feel they had been wanting to get to know concerning the exterior world,” Zhou recalled. “Though Kashgar is 1000’s of kilometers away from Shanghai, I hope the kids right here can research in trendy faculties like these in huge cities, and my mission was to slim the hole.”
Along with enhancing the services, Zhou was additionally dedicated to constructing a neighborhood staff that would increase the scholars’ capabilities.
Thirty workshops had been launched by way of the Magnolia Development venture to supply helpful recommendation to 170 native lecturers. Many of the mentors had been particular and senior-grade lecturers from Shanghai. The venture promoted the event of native lecturers’ specialities by way of strategies similar to pairing and mutual instruction, aiming to create a staff of excellent lecturers in Kashgar.
“The quantity, power and emotion of lecturers concerned within the venture had been unprecedented,” stated Yu. “Their educating methods had been refreshing to us. We recorded the courses for reference to lift our personal talents.”
Zhou additionally organized a weeklong exercise to current the outcomes of the venture to lecturers within the area. He invited consultants in fundamental schooling and headmasters and lecturers from well-known faculties in Shanghai to Kashgar to provide lectures and talk with their friends face-to-face about superior educating ideas and strategies. Along with the essential highschool topics similar to Chinese language, math, English, physics and chemistry, the exercise lined course growth, analysis steerage and ethical schooling with 352 lecturers in 12 cities and counties in Kashgar becoming a member of in.
College students focus on Zhou’s lesson.
The venture was given the thumbs up by the native schooling bureau and considered a traditional case of Shanghai’s poverty alleviation work in 2020.
Earlier than heading to Kashgar, Zhou had began to consider the longer term growth of its faculties. Combining the precise state of affairs at Kashgar No. 6 Excessive College and his personal expertise of faculty administration in Shanghai, he accomplished a five-year growth plan for the varsity which sparked discussions amongst native lecturers.
“We couldn’t think about a faculty with no plan in Shanghai. It’s laborious to understand the long-term growth of a faculty with none plan, even with a administration staff that has plentiful expertise,” stated Zhou. His plan was permitted final July with a goal of building a first-rate highschool in Xinjiang.
“These kids are like magnolia flowers which blossom within the spring. I consider these little magnolia flowers will flourish sooner or later,” stated Zhou.
Zhao teaches college students the enjoyment of music
Within the French film “Les Choristes,” faculty supervisor Clement Mathieu approaches the scholars by way of music as an alternative of bodily punishment, melting the hearts of each college students within the film and audiences within the cinema.
Zhao Xingzhou, a retired biology trainer from Jiading Yangliu Center College, is “trainer Mathieu” in actual life, delivering musical notes to kids in distant areas and hoping they will get to know the attraction of music and perceive the great thing about life by way of his courses.
Zhao Xingzhou took kids from Golog Prefecture in Qinghai Province to Shanghai to provide a efficiency on the Shanghai Poly Grand Theater.
In 2019, he decided to participate in enhancing schooling in distant areas by heading to the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Golog in Qinghai Province which stands at a mean altitude above 4,000 meters. He carried with him two intentions throughout his journey to the plateau. The primary was to search for inspiration to create songs and, extra importantly for the biology trainer, he wished to fulfil his dream of being a trainer of music.
Recalling the time when he labored on the first faculty within the countryside after commencement, lecturers had been free to sing, dance and play musical devices, gaining happiness from music. He wished to go down the enjoyment triggered by music to extra college students.
Though Zhao taught biology, he’s adept at singing and might play a number of devices such because the piano, flute, trumpet and string devices. He has additionally made his personal violin.
So when he heard the information from the Jiading poverty alleviation bureau that an ethnic minority boarding center faculty in Jiuzhi County in Qinghai’s Golog Prefecture wanted a music trainer, he instantly made up his thoughts to use.
The varsity has 951 college students in three grades, most of them Tibetan, and Zhao was liable for giving a music course for eighth graders in 9 courses.
Zhao spent per week settling in and was shocked to seek out that the varsity had a lot of a musical devices together with violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, piano, guitar and drums in situations even higher than many faculties in Shanghai.
Dong Mei, the headmaster, advised him that the varsity had been with no music trainer for a very long time, so the devices had simply been put aside.
Zhao took each certainly one of them out, made positive they had been playable and introduced them to the subsequent week’s class.
After noticing that native college students didn’t know the quantity system of musical notation and weren’t in a position to comply with a rhythm throughout class, he rewrote the course, educating college students from scratch with the straightforward notes of do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti do.
“Youngsters right here knew little concerning the fundamental data of music, which required me to be affected person sufficient to inform and educate them,” stated Zhao, including that his final aim was to coach them in order that they might sing following a rating and in tune. “These Tibetan college students are keen on music from the underside of their hearts, so I felt it was my responsibility to make their lives richer with melody.”
Zhao writes down the essential music data such because the quantity system of musical notation on the blackboard and wrote the textbook, educating college students from scratch with the straightforward notes of do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti do.
After listening to about this music trainer from Shanghai, Xu Zongjun, principal of the Jiuzhi County ethnic minority main faculty additionally wished Zhao to provide classes to second to fifth graders. Zhao’s fame unfold amongst increasingly native faculties and his time turned totally occupied with music courses, however he by no means complained.
“I attempted my greatest to assist them since they had been really in want. Academics have a duty to share no matter they know to assist college students, and that features me,” stated Zhao. “They’ve extra expertise in music than kids in Shanghai, however they’d a weak basis and lacked coaching and steerage from skilled lecturers. I hope they will go additional with my efforts.”
Zhao formally retired final December. After giving the final class, the kids rushed onto the stage to hug him and put a hada (a shawl that could be a conventional Tibetan reward) round his neck. Zhao was moved to tears and reluctant to depart.
Though his voluntary educating work has completed, he has already began planning to return to Qinghai.
“There may be extra I can do and I ought to do, and I’ll try to make the schooling business affluent in Golog Prefecture and preserve serving to to slim the hole,” he stated.
Native college students put a hada, a shawl that could be a conventional Tibetan reward, round Zhao’s neck to specific their gratitude for his educating.
