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Editor｜Zhu Keying Chen Tianmu

Secondary vocational education is vocational education conducted at the high school level, and its goal is to cultivate skilled personnel and high-quality workers on the basis of nine years of compulsory education. At the end of July, news that a private secondary vocational school in Guiyang illegally expanded enrollment and was suspected of false enrollment pushed vocational school education to the forefront and also revealed an unknown corner of the vocational school enrollment war.

What do you learn in a secondary vocational school? What is it like to be a teacher in a secondary vocational school?We invited a secondary vocational school class teacher born in 1998 to share her daily work, and hope to use this opportunity to get closer to the real life of secondary vocational schools.Compared with ordinary high school teachers, the work she needs to undertake is more trivial: teaching, restraining students' bad habits, doing ideological work for children who want to drop out of school, recruiting students, etc. She said that being a teacher is a "conscience job", with confusion and frustration, but also happy moments.

The following is Xiao Yang’s own account.

"I was very uncomfortable at first. Within three days, I couldn't speak at all."

I started working as a teacher in a private secondary vocational school in Henan in 2023. This choice was somewhat accidental. When I was in college, I took the "parents' happiness certificate" - the teacher qualification certificate like many students. When I graduated and looked for a job, I found that many schools required a normal school major to recruit teachers. I was not a normal school major and could not apply even if I had a teacher qualification certificate. By chance, I learned that secondary vocational schools do not require public cultural teachers to be from normal schools. After further consideration, I finally decided to come to a secondary vocational school to be a teacher.

I teach seven classes and am the head teacher of another class. I go to work at 8 am every day and get off work at 6 pm. I have a two-hour break at noon. The teachers in our school have a lot of substitute classes, more than 20 classes per week. I teach Chinese and English, and it takes more time to prepare lessons. I can only use my break time to write lesson plans.

At first, I was not used to it. There were only one or two free classes a day. Sometimes, by the third class, my legs were too weak to stand. Within three days, my throat was completely broken. Although there were breaks between classes, it was not enough for teachers like us who had classes back to back. I had to go to the classroom two or three minutes before class to wait for class, and I had to run to the toilet, so I only had about five minutes to rest during the break.

“Difficult students are difficult in their own way.”

Compared with general high schools, the most obvious thing about vocational high school students is that their grades are not good. Most of the students who come here are those who did not do well in the junior high school entrance examination and did not get into high school, so they choose vocational high schools. Another point is that the overall quality of students is slightly worse, of course there are good students, so we cannot generalize.

Vocational school students are in adolescence. In addition to not paying attention to their studies, they often smoke, drink, and fall in love. These problems exist in all schools, but they may be seen more frequently in vocational schools. This is also a headache for me as a class teacher. In addition to teaching every day, I have to talk to problem students. These students are used to doing their own thing and are unwilling to listen to your big talk. You can only coax them little by little.

In daily interactions, I feel that the students are generally pretty nice. They are not much older than me, so we can get along like friends. But there are always a few students in each class who are particularly difficult to manage. Each difficult student has his or her own difficulty, which often makes me furious. Fifteen or sixteen-year-old boys, about 1.7 or 1.8 meters tall, will talk back when criticized, which weakens the teacher's aura and makes them unable to listen to anything I say.

As a teacher, I feel that I have an obligation to teach these students well and try to guide them on the right path. But after a long time, I also feel helpless. They don't seem to understand you at all, and they will mock you in disguise. Sometimes I even doubt whether I have done something wrong. But now I can basically be self-consistent - I have done what I should do and said what I should say. Everything I say is for your own good. Whether you listen to it or not is your business.

I have also communicated with their parents, but some of them also don't take it to heart. Some parents know what their children are like, but they can't control them, so they send them to school and wait for them to go out to work after they grow up. Some students may be left-behind children. Their parents have been working since they were young, and the children are left with their grandparents. The parents lack care and attention for their children, and don't understand their children. The children are one way with them and another way at school. They just think that their children are not good at studying, and there are no problems in other aspects. But when the children violate the rules and regulations in school, during the communication between teachers and parents, parents will think that I am maliciously slandering them. How come the children are usually very well-behaved, but in the mouth of your class teacher, they seem to have become the one who "does many evil things"? Some parents will send me a small essay in the middle of the night to argue with me.

"As soon as I heard that a student wanted to drop out, I called within three seconds."

Vocational school teachers are different from general high school teachers. General high school teachers have more pressure in teaching and admissions, but the administrative work should be slightly less than that of vocational school teachers. In addition to daily teaching and student management, I also have to do a lot of trivial work, such as counting student attendance and family information, paying attention to students' physical and mental state, and even accepting their "emotional consultation" from time to time.

As a secondary vocational teacher, I don't have a real "summer break". Summer vacation is for students, and teachers also have a lot of work to do during the summer vacation, such as going out for study and training, being on duty, recruiting students, collecting various information, and dealing with class students' trivial matters.

Teachers should have a vacation time of about a month, and they should be on duty 1-2 times a week. The main content of the duty is to receive students and parents who visit the school, and patrol the campus. Some teachers from other cities have to go home during the summer vacation, but they have to be on duty, so they need to change shifts many times. If they want to go out to play, they have to exchange shifts with others in advance.

During the summer vacation, the news I fear most is not going to meetings or working overtime, but student safety issues and dropout issues.Students who drop out of school usually do not want to continue studying anymore, cannot concentrate on their studies, and want to go out to work.

When I heard that a student wanted to drop out, I called him within three seconds, and then I spent 20 minutes persuading him earnestly, listing the disadvantages of not going to school. After I had done ideological work with the student, I communicated with the parents and asked them to work with me, and sometimes I could persuade them to come back. But this is always an "unstable factor". Once the seed of wanting to drop out is planted, it will grow wildly in the heart.

I think it is unnecessary to enter the society to work too early, as they will suffer from lack of education sooner or later. Tuition and accommodation fees are not expensive, there are government subsidies, parents support their children to go to school, and they do not need to work to support their families. Children who want to drop out of school may simply enjoy the pleasure of not going to school and being free from constraints, without considering the future.

“Private secondary vocational schools generally face difficulty in recruiting students”

The students of our school are mainly those who failed the high school entrance examination in various counties and districts of the city. They generally have only two choices: one is to go to a private high school or a secondary vocational school, and the other is to go out to work. Some parents think that their children are too young and do not want them to go out to work too early. The tuition fees of secondary vocational schools are lower and there are state subsidies, so they will choose to send their children to secondary vocational schools.

The enrollment problem is a common problem for all private schools. The source of students determines everything. Without students, it is just empty talk. Our school has an admissions office specifically responsible for enrollment, but in recent years, due to the large number of schools and small number of students, private secondary vocational schools generally face the problem of difficulty in enrollment.

When entering the school, the school will let students choose whether to attend the advanced study class or the employment class according to their needs. Students of secondary vocational schools can take the vocational education college entrance examination or the entrance examination to continue their studies in university in their senior year. Therefore, students in the advanced study class will be arranged with more public courses, such as Chinese, mathematics, and English. Students in the employment class will also study public courses, but they will focus more on professional training to lay the foundation for future job hunting.

After graduating from secondary vocational schools, some students will be admitted to universities, while others will fail and go out to work. Those who enter society can find a good job based on their majors because they have learned professional courses in school and have a skill.

Back to myself,Most people pursue a teaching job, but after personal experience, I found that being a teacher is a "conscience job" and it is really tiring.Of course, there are also some happy moments in the complicated life. Not all students need me to "work hard", there are also some sensible children, and it is easy and pleasant to get along with them. They will joke with me, chat with me, and I feel that I can stay young when I am with them. They will prepare small gifts for me on holidays, such as a lollipop, a greeting card, or a blessing, which makes me very happy.Some parents will gradually recognize me after a long period of communication and exchanges. When parents send me a WeChat message saying that you are a good teacher and do a good job, I am really proud and feel full of happiness.