My primary school years were spent in Tingqi Primary School in Daitou Town, Putian. The primary school is located at the foot of Dahao Mountain and the shore of Houhai. At that time, the Houhai 303 project had not yet been enclosed, and at low tide, we often followed the adults to the nearby "seabed" to fish and catch shrimp. I have the impression that the teachers are diligent and loyal to their duties. When the harvest season comes, the school is busy with farming, and the well-dressed and dignified teachers, including the principal, are barefoot, roll up their trouser legs, and run around the fields, planting seedlings and grass, cutting rice and pulling beans, no different from us farmers ...... adults
Zhan Yiming is one of these ordinary rural teachers.
Composition Tips: Success, starting with simple imitation ......
Soon after the reform and opening up, to be precise, in the autumn of 1981, Mr. Zhan began to take over the Chinese class of the fourth grade of our primary school. What impressed me the most was his dedication to teaching composition. At that time, the social experience of rural children was very rare, and it was rare to have one or two essays for reference. In order to make up for the shortcomings of the model essays, every time I took a composition class, Mr. Zhan corrected and carefully copied the essays of the previous students, and pasted them on the wall of the classroom with glue one by one, so that we could study them one by one and refer to them. Whichever one you like, you will "refer to" it. It is said to be a reference, but in fact, it is more of a makeover, slightly modified, and added something that you are familiar with. Some lazy male classmates simply plagiarized things word for word. After we have "referenced" and handed in the essay for correction, Mr. Zhan will ask us to copy another article and give it to him for preservation, so that it can be left for the next batch of students to continue to "reference".
Now it seems that this kind of composition teaching method has the mechanical place of drawing a gourd, but in the era of lack of extracurricular books, this is also a very good way, starting from the model text, from copying, to rewriting, the composition is more operational, and I don't feel a headache when I learn it. When explaining those good model texts, he will be very excited, dancing with his hands and spitting. In particular, he was so happy that he read aloud a masterpiece that he thought was well-referenced and had good freedom to play, and he read it aloud with joy, which made the praiser proud. At that time, he praised several of my essays in court, which should have played a good role in promoting my future literary path. His earnestness and hard work in teaching have set an example for me to step onto the podium as a teacher in the future. When I graduated from university and taught in the middle school in my hometown, I occasionally published a few literary works and news reports in the party newspaper in Putian City, and Mr. Zhan was very happy, and sometimes he would pedal his somewhat worn out bicycle (Phoenix or permanent, I forgot), and went to the middle school to congratulate me in person, encouraging me to write hard and strive to "become famous as soon as I write". After I went back, he often praised me in front of my colleagues, and was proud of myself for being a "good student".
In my memory, in a street-facing restaurant on the corner of the old site of Daitou No. 1 Middle School next to the station, Mr. Zhan and I fried a few simple dishes and drank two bottles of beer. As the twilight filled the coastal land, he waved goodbye to me, jumped on his bicycle, and pedaled hard ......towards Yingqian Primary School, three kilometers away
More serious people: For the correction of errors in the teaching materials, he wrote letters to the Ministry of Education and other units 12 times......
Tingqi Primary School, Daitou Central Primary School, Xihu Primary School, Yingqian Primary School. These "points" are the trajectory of Mr. Zhan Yiming's work during his lifetime. In the eyes of his colleagues, his seriousness in teaching and the study of teaching materials are sometimes almost harsh, and he is almost obsessed with "nitpicking". What impressed me most was that he had "gone to the book" 8 times to correct errors in the textbook "Ideology and Morality".
In the fall of 1999, due to his physical discomfort, Mr. Zhan was asked to change to teaching ideological and moral courses. One day, he was suddenly startled in the preparation of a lesson, and it turned out that he found that there were more than 20 errors in the second volume of the primary school "Ideology and Morality" (the first edition in November 1999), which had just been handed out. For example, at the beginning of the first lesson, the "we" of "we love to learn" should be pronounced softly (no need to mark the tone), but the textbook mistakenly marked the "we" with a yang flat tone;Another example is the fifth natural paragraph in the fifth lesson "Dongdong borrowed an eraser from Xiaolan and returned it: "Thank you." This sentence obviously omits the word "say". There are 13 lessons in the book, except for the third lesson, there is at least one error, and the most is 6!
Errors in the teaching materials are not trivial. In line with the attitude of being highly responsible for the next generation and the people's educational cause, he approached a senior professor of the Putian High School who specializes in the study of Chinese and humbly asked for advice. In order to facilitate the correction and correction, he also spent two full days in his illness, carefully cutting out some mistakes in the textbook, and pasting another paper at the end of the text. Subsequently, in April 2000, he sent the eight-page letter to the Provincial Department of Education, the Provincial General Education Department, the Provincial Education Commission's Elementary Education Department, the Ministry of Education's Department of Elementary Education, and the Minister of Education's ......He pedaled his bicycle again and again to the Daitou Post Office, which was more than 6 miles away from the school, to send letters, and sent letters a total of 8 times. At that time, he had suffered from sciatica in both legs for many years, and the pain was often unbearable at night.
Sincerely, the gold and stone are open. Mr. Zhan's opinion was finally recognized and appreciated by the relevant parties. At the beginning of the autumn semester of this year, when he carefully flipped through the new edition of the textbook "Ideology and Morality" in September 2000, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the mistakes he had pointed out had been corrected one by one
In line with a rigorous and serious attitude towards studying, in just three years, he wrote 12 letters to the relevant responsible persons of the People's Education Publishing House, the Ministry of Education, and the provincial education publishing circles, sincerely pointing out the flaws and deficiencies in some textbooks, including primary school Chinese. It is gratifying to note that his suggestion has been taken seriously by the relevant departments, and the textbooks that have been wrong have been corrected in the reprint.
Farewell at the end of life: the final portrayal of a rigorous teaching life......
On May 6, 2009, I was shocked to learn that Mr. Zhan had unfortunately passed away at the age of 62. At 5 o'clock in the morning the next day, I got up early to wash up and drove straight to Pinghai Town, about 100 miles away, to see off Zhan Yiming, a teacher I respected, and an aspiring and affectionate rural Chinese teacher.
In the morning light, I sent a text message to the unit leader to ask for leave, and I went on the road with a solemn mood.
At around 7 o'clock in the morning, I drove to Yingqian Primary School in Daitou Town. This is Mr. Zhan's last job before he retires, and many of his colleagues are ready to see him off. Five of them got into my car and headed to Pinghai together. The car was moving slowly along the winding country road, and I held the steering wheel with a solemn expression along the way. The wings of my heart have flown to the distant past, remembering the bits and pieces of my kindness.
In a small coastal village called Beiqiao, we walked into a courtyard, and there was already a lot of crying here. Some of the people I knew, and many more I didn't know, were crying, or choking, or standing in front of the spirit. In front of the simple and simple urn, there is a picture frame of the teacher, his hair is gray, and his cold eyes are looking at the beings in front of him, just like the scene when he taught us when he was young, his face is full of seriousness and meticulousness, but there is no longer a happy smile that blooms from time to time.
According to the customs of the coast, I paid 201 yuan to a middle-aged man in charge of the funeral (1 yuan more, meaning "out of the head"), which is considered "firecracker money". The host replied to me 100 yuan. There are strict rules on the time of going up the mountain to be buried, depending on the "flowing water" of the tide. Less than 8 o'clock, after the firecrackers went off, one of Mr. Zhan's sons held a burning "grass snake" to lead the way, and another son held the urn. After a winding path, he came to a small hill to the west, where his family had built a new residence for his mentor, a bluestone, delicately crafted tomb, much smaller than the traditional tomb. In recent years, the cremation system has been widely implemented in the rural areas of Putian, but the corresponding cemeteries have not really been built in the countryside, so in many places, after cremation, the urn has to be sent to the mountains for burial. Soon, the urn was sent to the grave, and the relatives knelt down in front of the grave, beating their chests and feet, and wept. My colleagues and I stood aside and silently blessed our teacher in our hearts, praying that his soul in heaven would rest in peace soon, that he would be able to relax from now on, that he would not have to be tormented by illness, that he would not have to worry about the livelihood of his children, and that he would not have to be indignant about the filth of the world. Farewell to the deceased, immersive, kind people like me, it is difficult to suppress the ups and downs of the heart, tears burst out of the eyes. In the confusion with tears in our eyes, several teachers and I recalled the many advantages of Mr. Zhan during his lifetime, his rigorous teaching and education, and his enthusiasm for dealing with people. whispered, sighed, yes, life is short, life is fragile, standing for a long time, sighing.
After sending the deceased to the funeral, it is customary not to go back. In silence, we walked along another winding and difficult field path back to the teacher's deserted home. On several occasions, I looked back at the long funeral procession, which included Mr. Zhan's family, relatives, and friends during his lifetime, as well as many fellow villagers of Mr. Zhan. Many of them, either themselves, their descendants, or their children and grandchildren, were once students of their teacher, and they had listened to the teacher's lively and witty lectures. Or, in the long years of the past, I asked Teacher Zhan to write Spring Festival couplets, write letters to my family, or ask teachers to help educate disobedient children. Or, during the summer vacation on a hot day, ask Ms. Zhan to teach their children how to write composition, brush or pen hand-in-hand. All of this is free of charge. I often think that rural teachers, especially elderly teachers, they don't value money, they are honest, they are simple, this is their most valuable character.
Taking time out of my busy journalistic work to go back to the countryside to attend the funeral of a primary school teacher was a completely conscious move for me. The ancients said that he was a teacher for one day and a father for life, not to mention that he once loved me very much, and had a great influence on me in terms of teaching and personality. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is a teacher.
After the funeral, I returned to his house and listened to his son-in-law say that on the night of May 4, 2009, Mr. Zhan, who was exhausted by the disease, could no longer speak. Before he died, he gestured vigorously and asked his family to bring pen and paper. Holding a trembling pen, he solemnly wrote down the four words "time of death", reminding his family to remember the exact time of his death ...... when the time comesHe was devoted to learning all his life, and he was not sloppy and careless, so that the strict record of the time of his death at the time of his death did not allow for the slightest mistake. The four words "time of death" have become the last portrayal of Mr. Zhan's rigorous teaching life.
Mr. Zhan was born in a poor family in Pinghai Fishing Village, and had two sons and two daughters before his death, most of whom were either engaged in business or part-time work, and only the couple with the second daughter taught in a rural primary school, inheriting his mantle and making his career successors. Nine years after his death, his youngest son also died of illness and went with him.
Time flies, Teacher Zhan left us, and it has been 14 years in the blink of an eye......
*: Putian Evening News Lin Shuanghua.
Editor-in-charge: Xu Boying.
Editor: Lin Shuanghui.