In a remote mountain village, there is a primary school. Because of the poor conditions in all aspects, seven or eight teachers have left in one year.
When the villagers and children reluctantly sent away the tenth teacher, someone asserted with cold heart; There won't be another teacher.
The village really can't send anyone, so we have to invite a female college student who has just graduated and been assigned to take classes for a while. I don't know whether female college students are curious or other reasons, and they will get along well with their children soon.
Three months later, the distribution notice of female college students arrived. The villagers only took their children to see the substitute teacher off as in the past ten times.
Who knows, the unexpected happened-that day, the substitute teacher walked down the hillside with tears in her eyes, and the ancient poems she taught the children in the first class suddenly came from behind:
The endless grassland on the plain.
It withers and grows once a year.
Wildfire can't put it out.
They have grown taller in the spring breeze. ...
The voice of reciting echoed for a long time, and the young substitute teacher turned back. Twenty children knelt on the high hillside-no one had the heart to be moved by it that day ... The emotion in the children's eyes made her understand instantly: it was the children's desire for knowledge, and they were innocent and helpless to retain it!
The substitute teacher is at a standstill. She returned to primary school with her luggage. She became the eleventh teacher. In the following days, she sent away a batch of children from this primary school and let them go to junior high school, high school and university ... This stay was for twenty years.
When I heard this story, it was the time when the female teacher was sent to Beijing for treatment. I've always wanted to visit her, but I couldn't make it for various reasons.
After all, I didn't meet that rural female teacher. When I finally had a chance to come to this primary school, a male teacher had come to give her a class. The new teacher told me that she was terminally ill and only ashes came back from Beijing. I saw her ashes in a red wooden box with no photos on it.
Before leaving, the male teacher told me that there was no twelfth teacher in this school. No matter who will take over in the future, it will always be the eleventh. This is the glory of all teachers who can work here, he said. There is also an unwritten rule in this primary school. What is that? He didn't tell me right away. At that time, he just smiled and said to me, tomorrow morning, you will know.
The next day, I got up early from the township guest house a few miles away from the primary school. As soon as I climbed to the high hillside outside the courtyard wall, I heard Bai Juyi's familiar poem:
The endless grassland on the plain.
It withers and grows once a year.
Wildfire can't put it out.
They have grown taller in the spring breeze. ...
As I remember, today is the first class for freshmen.