Home visits give teacher insight into students' lives

LHASA－Yang Ling, a music teacher in Guangdong province, has two notebooks recording the personality traits of her students 3,000 kilometers away on the Tibetan plateau.

"Ma Zhixiong is an introvert. During my home visit, I discovered that he has weak learning skills, and does no homework at weekends," reads one note. Another reads: "Song Jiahui is meticulous and considerate. But, according to his parents, he lacks self-control and is always engrossed in his cellphone at home."

Her observations are based on the 178 trips she has made to the homes of her students in the city of Nyingchi in the Tibet autonomous region over the past three years.

Yang is a teacher in Guangdong's Renhua county but she volunteered to teach at the Bayi High School in Nyingchi in 2019.

She is among the 2,000-plus teachers who have volunteered to work in Tibet since 2016 as part of China's pairing-up assistance program to help the region's development.

The teachers were sent to work in 21 schools across Tibet, helping them to improve their teaching quality.

Braving numerous challenges such as altitude sickness, Yang applied to be a class supervisor after her arrival in 2019.

"My students came from different ethnic groups. I wanted to know more about them, and being a class supervisor offered me greater access to them," said Yang, who concluded her three-year tenure in Nyingchi and returned to Guangdong last month.

Her routine home visits stemmed from a chance visit to one of her students' homes. The student had passed out during a physical education class, so Yang visited her at home with nutritional supplements and fruits. She realized that she learned a lot by interacting with the family during the visit.

"Her parents and I exchanged opinions about education, and our conversation lasted until midnight," she recalled. The experience prompted Yang to conduct regular home visits, no matter how far.

She bought an electric bicycle to save time, but it still took her more than an hour to reach some of the more distant homes.

After each visit, Yang would write down in detail her observations in her thick, worn notebooks. She also carefully documented even the smallest changes she saw. "These visits not only allowed me to learn more about my students outside of the classroom but also made them feel valued by their teacher," Yang said, adding that she would adopt different ways of communicating based on their personalities.

One of them, Tenzin Konchok, was from a single-parent family. His grandmother was taking care of him as his father had to work in the regional capital, Lhasa.

The grandmother said that the boy became reserved after his parents divorced, and his academic performance had deteriorated significantly. "Following Yang's visits, I saw a change in him. He became more extroverted and more forthcoming with his thoughts," she added.

Yang also took the initiative to set up a music club at the school, giving classes in the Chinese zither or guzheng, as an extracurricular activity.

Since returning to Guangdong, Yang has often received WeChat messages from her students and their parents, telling her about their examinations and senior high school admission results.

"Hearing all the good news from Tibet, I know my efforts paid off. I believe that's the best gift I could have left for Tibet," she said.

Xinhua