The cause of education is a sacred mission, and many people devote themselves to the teaching profession with lofty ideals. Of all the teachers, the rural teachers are especially admirable. They faced difficult teaching conditions and meager incomes, but they still had a love for education and resolutely stuck to the three-foot podium.
Ren Zongyu is one such rural teacher, who has been teaching in mountain villages for decades, even without pay, and has never left his job. His spirit is touching, and his actions are worth learning from each and every one of us.
Ren Zongyu was born in 1963 in Tanggou Village, Zhaocun Township, Lushan County, Henan Province, an extremely impoverished mountain village where the villagers lived a difficult life, and his fate seemed even more difficult.
Childhood illness left him disabled, but Ren Zongyu's life was full of miracles. He had escaped death twice, once when he was still in infancy and dying, when he was picked up by his mother in a ravineAnother time, under the shadow of a critical illness notice, he once again triumphed over death.
His life is full of uncertainties, but his strength and perseverance make people see the miracle of life.
Ren Zongyu's perseverance, and his dream of changing his fate through reading was frustrated in the college entrance examination physical examination. Despite his physical disability, he did not give up and instead looked for a way out with a more positive attitude.
Li Yanlin, an education specialist, saw his potential and invited him to teach in the village's primary school. As a result, Ren Zongyu became a "substitute teacher" in Tanggou Primary School, and passed the county's private teacher unified examination with excellent results, becoming a private teacher with an establishment.
Although the substitute teaching fee is only 9 yuan per month, he still devotes himself to teaching and educating people.
Ren's career as a teacher has been full of challenges and twists and turns. In 1989, he saw an article in a magazine about Fengcheng Hospital in Jiangxi Province, praising the hospital's excellent corrective surgery technology, so he came up with the idea of going to Fengcheng to see a doctor.
However, despite multiple surgeries and several months of casts in Fengcheng, the results were not satisfactory. When he returned to his hometown, he was told that he had missed the opportunity to become a full-fledged teacher due to his departure.
This news made Ren Zongyu feel very desperate, and even considered giving up his teaching career and looking for other development paths.
Ren Zongyu gave up a number of career change opportunities, including opening a repair shop and running a "tutoring class", and decided to stay at Tanggou Primary School to continue teaching. Because he knew that there was only one teacher left in Tanggou Primary School, and if he also left, then the children would lose their teachers.
He decided to take on this responsibility, and for the sake of the children's education, he chose to stick to it.
Ren Zongyu is a substitute teacher in Tanggou Village, and he loves the children here deeply. When many villagers approached him and said that if he didn't continue teaching, they wouldn't let their children go to school, Ren decided to stay.
He turned down the opportunity to work outside the home and stayed at the school to teach. Later, he was appointed as the principal of Tanggou Elementary School and devoted himself more fully to the development of the school.
Together with the village cadres, he mobilized the masses to donate money to help teachers, and also donated his collection of books for many years to the school.
He only has 100 yuan a month as a substitute teacher, but he still does his best and cares about the children's learning and life. He once helped a child from a deaf family improve her academic performance, and also gave her care and help in life.
When he graduated and left, the girl gave him a note that read, "Teacher, I really want to call you Daddy." Now, the girl has found a job in Beijing and has changed her destiny by her own efforts.
He educates with heart and guards with love, and every child is his treasure.
In 1999, Ren Zongyu published an essay in a Henan newspaper entitled "The Wish of a Teacher in a Mountain Village", but he did not foresee that this article would rewrite his future.
After the publication of "The Wish of the Mountain Village Teacher", Xiaowen, a girl from Zhumadian, Henan Province, was deeply moved and exchanged letters with Ren Zongyu, and after a period of communication, Xiaowen, who learned that Ren Zongyu was still single, decided to marry him.
In 2000, Ren Zongyu and Xiaowen tied the knot, when Ren Zongyu was 35 years old and Xiaowen was 20 years old, and the age gap did not become a barrier between them. In a 2021 interview, Xiaowen said that despite many difficulties in life, she never regretted her choice.
With Xiaowen's company, Ren Zongyu's life has been taken care of, and he has been supported spiritually. The two take care of the students of Tanggou Primary School together.
Ren Zongyu, a teacher living in the mountains, uses practical actions to interpret what true love and responsibility are. He cares about every student, especially the "left-behind children", and he takes them back home, taking care of their lives and helping them with their homework.
Ren Zongyu knew that only by continuous learning could he teach students well, so he completed his training as a key teacher in 2000 and obtained a diploma in Chinese language and literature.
Although he is the only teacher in Tanggou Primary School, he did not get distracted by this, but studied the teaching methods in depth and carefully arranged the teaching work, so that students of different grades could learn in an orderly manner in the same classroom.
This is Ren Zongyu, a conscientious teacher, whose behavior allows us to see the temperature and power of education.
During the period of transition from examination-oriented education to quality education, Ren Zongyu still went out to listen to classes and learn from other outstanding teachers despite his physical disability, and summed up the four-character education method of "strict love and practical life" based on his own teaching experience.
His teaching methods are lively and lively, and he often moves the classroom to nature, which greatly stimulates students' interest in learning, and students' academic performance is constantly improving.
However, after the rural fee was changed to tax in 2002, the township co-ordination and village retention were abolished, and the substitute teacher was also dismissed.
In the next three years, he did not get a salary, and relied on his wife Xiaowen to get up early and work late to maintain the family's income, but he still stuck to the three-foot podium and taught and educated people conscientiously.
Without a salary, life for Ren Zongyu's family became increasingly difficult. Although the villagers often help to harvest crops and deliver food as a token of gratitude, the assistance they can provide is limited because of the extreme poverty of the mountain villages.
Even in the end, the family didn't even have the cost of the New Year. Later, Ren Zongyu wrote couplets and his wife went out to sell, barely enough to scrape together a few hundred yuan for the New Year. Once, when Ren Zongyu fell ill, the villagers donated money to help him raise more than 1,000 yuan and help him get through the difficulties.
Ren Zongyu's students also respect this teacher very much. A few years ago, a few teenage children saved up a sum of money by helping the family with farm work and chopping wattles to collect firewood in their spare time.
On Ren Zongyu's birthday, they bought him a cake and sang a birthday song for him together. Recalling this incident, Ren Zongyu is still very excited, and he said that it was his first birthday.
Ren Zongyu has been in Tanggou Primary School for 41 years, and his salary is still only more than 1,000 yuan, but he has never wavered in his belief in continuing to teach. His wife, Xiaowen, also fully supported him and worked together for him.
In a 2010 interview with CCTV, Xiaowen said that they had raised more than 30,000 yuan, contracted the barren mountain behind the house, and built a chicken farm. Now, Xiaowen devotes all his energy to taking care of Ren Zongyu and the chicken farm.
She firmly said that Teacher Ren loves the school and students deeply, and he will continue to teach, even if he can't become a regular, she believes that she can support him with her own ability.
During his 41-year teaching career, Ren Zongyu has trained more than 50 college students in poor mountain villages, some of whom have been admitted to Tianjin University, Central South University and other famous universities, and many students have obtained master's and doctoral degrees.
Therefore, he won many honors such as the "May Day" Labor Medal of Pingdingshan City, Outstanding Communist Party Member, and Model Party Member.
In the second "Most Beautiful Mountain Village Teacher" selection, Ren Zongyu was awarded the "2018 Jack Ma Rural Teacher Award" and received a bonus of 100,000 yuan from Jack Ma himself.
He said that although he rarely goes out of the mountain village because of his leg disability, he will turn his curiosity about the outside world into motivation to help children in the mountain realize their dream of going out of the mountains and moving towards a better life.
Ren Zongyu's touching deeds have attracted widespread attention across the country and have become a model for many teachers. In August 2021, before the start of the new semester, Yanzuo Primary School in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province even used Ren Zongyu's advanced deeds as teaching materials for teacher ethics training, setting an excellent example for all teachers in the school.
After **related**, many teachers of the school were deeply touched, and they were deeply moved by the deeds of teacher Ren Zongyu in the depths of the mountains and inspiring more than 2,000 students with the power of one person.
Teacher Ren's dedication made everyone feel the vibration of their hearts. Some teachers said that we should learn from the selfless dedication of Teacher Ren Zongyu and pay attention to the healthy growth of students with benevolence.
In addition, many people also went to the depths of the mountains, hoping to provide help to Mr. Ren Zongyu. In an interview in 2021, I happened to meet Wang Chunhuai, a student of Ren Zongyu back then.
Wang Chunhuai said that Mr. Ren is not only his teacher, but also the teacher of his two younger brothers, who were admitted to Hebei University and Zhengzhou University respectively, and now work as civil servants in Zhejiang and Henan respectively.
Wang Chunhuai not only shared that his child was also a student of Ren Zongyu, and was later admitted to university, and proudly said that his production group has a total of 13 households and 9 undergraduates, which is the production group with the most undergraduates in the neighborhood.
This fully reflects Ren Zongyu's teaching achievements. In addition, the current Tanggou Primary School has undergone earth-shaking changes, with many facilities such as computers, slides, basketball hoops, table tennis tables and other facilities donated by caring people, and the teaching method has changed from a simple board book to a multi-class teaching.
However, Ren Zongyu has always adhered to the three-foot podium and devoted himself to the growth of students, and his educational philosophy and teaching methods have never changed.
Xiaowen looks back on the past and is saddened by the hardships they have endured, but now everything is moving in a positive direction, which makes her feel gratified.
Xiaowen revealed that their children are quite mature, their daughter has been successfully admitted to Southern Medical University, and has the lofty ambition of becoming a doctor to treat diseases and save people, and their son is also studying hard in school and has excellent grades.
Ren Zongyu is an optimistic person, and he prefers to share interesting facts about his career in front of the camera to make everyone laugh. This positive attitude may have been the reason why he held out in the depths of the mountains for 41 years.
Nowadays, more and more children are coming out of Tanggou Village and moving towards a better future, Lushan County, which was once a national-level poverty-stricken county, has also gotten rid of the hat of poverty, and the lives of the villagers in Tanggou Village are gradually improving, which is the value that Ren Zongyu adheres to.