Students and their volunteer teachers pose for a photo. [Photo/tznews.cn]
Over the past 14 years, the Taixing bureau of education has sent 77 outstanding teachers to teach at a school in Jiuquan, Northwest China's Gansu province, with the students at the school being children of local military personnel.
The cooperation story began in 2012, when a group of teachers from Taixing in East China's Jiangsu province went to the northwest region to become volunteer teachers. Faced with a difficult environment, the first batch of volunteer teachers led by Chen Hui from Taixing Yangsi Middle School rose to the challenge.
At that time, no student from the school had gained admission to Jiuquan Middle School, and their best score was still 138 points below the minimum threshold.
Through one year's efforts by Chen and his colleagues, four students succeeded to be admitted, a historic breakthrough.
When the end of his support teaching period arrived, Chen decided to keep teaching there for another three years, as the students were loath to part ways with him.
In 2017, Ma Jun from Taixing Jinjiang Primary School also started his journey of teaching support. He led the establishment of a literature society in the school and used his spare time to carefully guide students in writing. Within just three months, 59 students' works were published in the society's magazine.
Ma also promoted the establishment of an evaluation system that measures students' growth using multiple indicators, making the learning experience for local students more pleasant.
In the summer of 2023, Yan Xingjian, a teacher at Taixing Jichuan Middle School, took over the baton of teaching support and became the principal of the Jiuquan school the following year.
He dedicated himself to bringing patriotism into daily school life by arranging for students to visit the satellite launch center and inviting military role models to tell stories about border defense.