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in guangnan county, wenshan prefecture, yunnan province, there is a rural teacher who, despite worldly prejudices, came alone to the "leprosy village" in the mountains. he has been working as a teacher and a school for 38 years, and has sent more than 100 children out of the mountains...

he is the national model of teaching in 2024 - nong jiagui, a teacher from luosongdi primary school, beining central school, liancheng town, guangnan county.

38 years ago, luosongdi was still a small village without a name. because leprosy patients were isolated and treated here for many years, everyone referred to this place as "that village" in a very euphemistic way.

in 1986, due to his family's poverty, 20-year-old nong jiagui was introduced to a job as a substitute teacher, but he did not expect that the job location was in "that village" that everyone avoided. the official opening day of school on september 1 of that year was a day that nong jiagui would never forget.

nong jiagui, a teacher at luosongdi primary school, beining central school, liancheng town, guangnan county, wenshan prefecture, yunnan province: there were 8 parents with 12 children. they stood far away and looked at me. when i first saw those parents whose bodies were severely deformed by the disease, i was very scared and turned around and ran away. later, the doctor who went with me stopped me and asked me what would happen to these children if i ran away. you see, the older ones are 11 or 12 years old and have never been to school. no one wants to be their teacher. seeing the expectant eyes of those parents and the eager eyes of the children, i couldn't take the step of running away, so i stayed and have been working here until today, 38 years later.

entering the "leprosy village" primary school, nong jiagui became the first and only teacher. when he first arrived at the school, the conditions were backward, with only a 20-square-meter adobe house, and even this leaky classroom was borrowed from the village clinic. the desks and chairs were also old furniture gathered together by the villagers, and even the blackboard was made by nong jiagui who found a piece of wood and dyed it with ink himself.

• there were no textbooks, so nong jiagui asked people to find old textbooks for him.
• there were not enough test papers, so nong jiagui wrote the questions on the blackboard and asked the students to copy and do the questions at the same time;
• since no teacher was willing to invigilate the exam, nong jiagui took on the responsibilities of invigilator.

in addition to the many difficulties that need to be overcome in teaching, nong jiagui also suffers tremendous psychological pressure.

nong jiagui told the reporter that it would be a lie to say that he was not afraid of teaching in a "leprosy village". in those years, when he went to the central school for meetings, other teachers knew that he came from a "leprosy village" and did not dare to sit with him. he was also worried all day long, fearing that he would be infected. however, teaching children to read inevitably involves contact with villagers. what nong jiagui remembers most is that once he reported his teaching progress to the village chief, the village chief invited him to dinner at his home.

nong jiagui: the village chief was very happy at the time and tried to invite the two of us to his house for dinner. i was very conflicted at the time. i was afraid to eat, but i couldn't refuse the village chief's hospitality. i decided to stay and eat. i still remember that meal. later, the children and villagers completely trusted me. they knew that i could eat in their village.

due to limited conditions at that time, children could only study in the village primary school until the third grade.

nong jiagui: at the beginning, our school only taught children up to the third grade. we started teaching in 1986. in 1989, the first batch of children finished the third grade. i sent them to other schools, but no school was willing to accept them. at that time, a few older children asked me, "teacher, is the third grade the end of school? there will be no more books to read. after finishing school, we will go home and work like our brothers and sisters, right?" i was very sad when i heard that.

nong jiagui said that he felt very sad after hearing the children's questions. after several days of careful consideration, nong jiagui decided that since no school would accept the fourth-grade children from the "leprosy village", he would innovate the teaching model himself and teach all the courses from first to sixth grade, including chinese and mathematics, in one go until the children graduated from primary school.

nong jiagui: i first teach the senior students how to preview and hand over. after the junior students finish the new lesson and do their homework, i will go to the senior students to teach the new lesson. after the senior students have finished the new lesson and done the assigned homework, i will go to the junior students to check if they have done their homework and if there is anything they don’t understand. this is how we rotate.

in 1992, the first batch of students from the village primary school graduated. in order to ensure that the children could be successfully admitted to the junior high school in the county, nong jiagui came up with a good idea.

nong jiagui: when filling in the student information, i didn't dare to write "leprosy village" in the home address column. based on some local natural conditions, i changed the name of the village "luosongdi" primary school, which no one knew where. so that year i was able to successfully bring my children to the county school to take the entrance examination. what touched me most was that more than ten days after the exam, when i went to check the children's test scores, the teacher in charge of admissions asked me, do you know "luosongdi" primary school? the question was very sudden, and i was scared at the time. did he know that "luosongdi" was "leprosy village"? i told him that i didn't know. later, the admissions teacher told me, you see, the 12 children of "luosongdi" primary school did so well in the exam, the highest score was 206 points, and the lowest score was 135 points, both of which exceeded our admission score of 115 points this year. after he said this, i slowly became happy and secretly copied the children's scores. especially that night, i brought this news to the "leprosy village", and the whole village was happy.

since then, the "leprosy village" has a new name - "luosongdi" village. after taking the children for a physical examination and obtaining a health certificate, all the children who graduated from the first "luosongdi" primary school were admitted to the county's junior high school with excellent grades. in the past 38 years, nong jiagui has recruited a total of 12 classes here and sent out 126 students. they have integrated into the big family of society with the dreams that their parents failed to realize in their lifetime. many students have become civil servants, teachers, and policemen. knowledge has helped them change their destiny and usher in a "butterfly change" in their lives.

nong jiagui: as their teacher, i am also proud of them. we are still in touch with each other, especially on teacher's day every year, i receive the most blessings from students, so i am very happy, and this is what i am most proud of.

today, with the care and help of the local party committee, government and all sectors of society, the "luosongdi" primary school has long been transformed from a dilapidated house with wind and rain leaks into a spacious and bright teaching building; the once isolated mountain village has gotten rid of disease and poverty and has become a model village for ethnic unity and progress in wenshan prefecture. in 2023, in addition to being a rural teacher, nong jiagui has a new identity - a representative of the national people's congress. having been rooted in rural education for a long time, he is most concerned about improving the quality of education in remote ethnic minority areas.

nong jiagui: it is difficult to retain excellent teachers in our remote mountainous areas. most of the teachers are over 40 or 50 years old. they are former substitute teachers and private teachers who have been transferred to public schools. their teaching quality is not very high. i suggest that those excellent teachers can go to our remote mountainous areas and work together with our teachers in remote mountainous areas to improve the quality of education and teaching. this is what i am mainly concerned about.

source: cctv news client

process editor: u071