From a county-level lecture hall to a nationally renowned teacher

一

Lin Zhiyuan spent the entire month of August at school.

Although it was summer vacation, there wasn't much to do. After registering, he received his new semester's timetable—Chinese for two first-year high school classes, twelve regular classes per week, plus two evening self-study sessions. Chen Mingyuan handed him the textbooks and teaching materials, a thick stack tied with plastic rope.

"Prepare well," Chen Mingyuan said. "School starts on September 1st, and the first class is very important."

Lin Zhiyuan carried the textbooks back to his dormitory and flipped through them one by one.

He was very familiar with the first volume of the People's Education Press high school Chinese textbook. He himself had read it from that textbook. The first unit was poetry, including poems like "Qinyuanchun: Changsha," "Rainy Alley," and "Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again"... He had found these texts beautiful when he studied them back then. Now that he had to teach them himself, he didn't know where to begin.

He dug out his old college notes and borrowed a bunch of reference materials from the library, preparing his lessons in his dorm room for a whole month. During the day, when it was unbearably hot, he would sit shirtless on his desk, writing lesson plans until beads of sweat dripped from his nose onto the paper. In the cooler evenings, he would move a chair to the doorway and continue studying by the light of the corridor lamp.

Wang Jianguo would sometimes come over for a visit, and seeing how diligently he was preparing his lessons, he couldn't help but laugh: "Preparing lessons this meticulously? Let me tell you, for the first lesson, you just need to introduce yourself and talk about what Chinese is, and forty minutes will pass by in no time."

"I'm afraid I won't be satisfied with what I say."

"Not enough to talk about?" Wang Jianguo laughed. "You'll be afraid you won't be able to finish. Once the students start asking questions and discussing, the time will be gone in a flash."

Lin Zhiyuan was skeptical.

He followed the instructional design methods he learned in university, specifying the time for each lesson down to the minute. Five minutes for introduction, ten minutes for reading aloud, twenty minutes for explanation, five minutes for discussion, and five minutes for summary. His lesson plans were densely written, like a script.

In mid-August, the school notified new teachers to attend pre-service training. The training was held at the county teachers' training school and lasted for a week, covering topics such as teacher ethics, teaching routines, and homeroom teacher duties. Lin Zhiyuan sat in the audience listening, feeling that most of the content had been covered in university, but he still took careful notes.

On the last day of the training, the principal of the continuing education school invited a distinguished teacher from the city to give a lecture. The teacher, surnamed Liu, was in his fifties, with a full head of white hair, and spoke slowly and deliberately.

He said, "The hardest thing about being a teacher is not teaching well, but teaching people well. Remember this: students are first and foremost human beings, and only then are they your students."

Lin Zhiyuan wrote this sentence on the first page of his notebook.

two

Lin Zhiyuan couldn't sleep the day before school started.

He lay on his wooden bed in the dormitory, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. His mind replayed the scene of his first class the next day. He would be standing on the podium, with over fifty students sitting below, all watching him. What would be the first thing he said?

"Hello students, my surname is Lin, and I am your Chinese teacher."

Too ordinary.

"What is Chinese language and literature? I will spend three years answering this question."

That's too pretentious.

He rehearsed over a dozen opening lines in his mind, but none of them satisfied him. He tossed and turned until 2 a.m., finally managing to drift off to sleep.

He woke up at six o'clock the next morning, before the alarm clock even went off. He washed his face and changed into a white shirt—a shirt he had bought specifically for the start of school, costing thirty-five yuan, which he had spent half a day picking out at the department store in the county town. The shirt was a bit big; tucking it into his pants made his waist look too thin. He adjusted the shirt again in front of the mirror, but he was still not quite satisfied.

Forget it.

He picked up his lesson plan and left the dormitory.

The campus was already filled with people. A few early arrivals were walking in twos and threes on the playground. A girl was reciting English under a sycamore tree, her voice soft but very focused. The aroma of porridge and steamed buns wafted from the cafeteria.

Lin Zhiyuan ate a steamed bun and a bowl of porridge at the cafeteria, and then went to his office. The Chinese language group's office was on the third floor of the teaching building, a large classroom converted into a classroom with more than a dozen desks. When he arrived, Chen Mingyuan was already there, drinking tea from an enamel mug.

"Nervous?" Chen Mingyuan asked.

"A little," Lin Zhiyuan honestly admitted.

"It's normal." Chen Mingyuan spat out some tea leaves. "I've been teaching for thirty years, and I still get nervous on the first day of school. What's that called? It's called reverence. Without that, you shouldn't be a teacher."

At 7:50, the school bell rang.

three

Lin Zhiyuan stood at the door of the classroom of Class 3, Grade 1, and took a deep breath.

The door was closed. He could hear sounds inside—chairs creaking, voices talking, laughter—a chaotic mess, like a pot of boiling water.

He pushed open the door and went inside.

The noise in the classroom didn't stop because of his arrival. More than fifty students sat in their seats, some chatting, some reading extracurricular books, and some sleeping on their desks. A boy by the window was playfully fighting with a girl, completely unaware that someone was standing on the podium.

Lin Zhiyuan stood behind the podium, placed his lesson plan on the table, and then—he realized he didn't know what to do.

All the teaching methods and pedagogy he learned in university were forgotten at this moment. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but something seemed to be stuck in his throat. He could even feel his hands trembling, not obviously, but definitely shaking.

The classroom gradually quieted down. Not because someone shouted "The teacher is here," but because the students instinctively noticed a stranger on the podium.

The boy who had been fooling around by the window was the first to notice, looking up at him with a hint of curiosity in his eyes. Then came the girl who had been sleeping face down, who was woken up by someone pushing her. She groggily raised her head, her hair a mess.

More than fifty pairs of eyes were fixed on him.

Lin Zhiyuan cleared his throat and spoke.

"Hello everyone, my surname is Lin, and I am your..."

He meant to say "Chinese teacher," but what came out was—

"My surname is Lin, and I'm from the same planet as you."

The classroom fell silent for a second.

Then, the whole class burst into laughter.

A girl sitting in the first row was laughing so hard she was practically lying on the table, her shoulders shaking. The boy by the window laughed out loud and even mimicked, "Same here!" Several people around him joined in the laughter, making it even louder.

Lin Zhiyuan's face flushed instantly. He stood there, like a fool, feeling the blood rushing to his head.

"It's over," he thought. "The first lesson was a disaster."

The laughter continued. Some students began to whisper among themselves. He vaguely heard someone say "newcomer," with a hint of disdain in their tone.

Lin Zhiyuan's mind raced. He recalled his teaching methodology professor saying that in the event of an unexpected situation in the classroom, the most important thing is not to panic, but to react. How you handle it determines how your students perceive you.

He took a deep breath, and then—smiled.

“See,” he said, his voice not loud but clear enough, “that’s the charm of a slip of the tongue. I meant to say ‘I am your Chinese teacher,’ but I said ‘same ball.’ What does that show? It shows that my mouth is faster than my brain. When your mouth is fast, you’re more likely to make mistakes.”

The laughter gradually subsided, and the students listened.

"However," Lin Zhiyuan continued, "this also illustrates a point. Language is such a wondrous thing. A single word can completely change the meaning. What are we learning when we study Chinese? Aren't we learning how to use words effectively, how to synchronize our mouths and brains?"

He paused, then looked around the classroom.

"So, in this first lesson, I want to use this slip of the tongue to tell you two things. First, Teacher Lin is also human and makes mistakes. Second, learning Chinese is about learning to speak properly. It's not terrible to say the wrong thing; what's terrible is not knowing you've said something wrong, or knowing it but not correcting it."

The classroom fell completely silent.

Then, someone started clapping, a sparse clapping, and more and more people joined in. The applause wasn't loud, but Lin Zhiyuan thought it sounded better than any other sound.

The girl who was laughing the loudest looked up at him, and there was something different in her eyes.

four

The second half of the first lesson went much more smoothly than expected.

Lin Zhiyuan didn't rush into lecturing. He had the students take turns introducing themselves, each standing up to say their name, which junior high school they came from, and why they came to the county's No. 1 High School. There were more than fifty students, each with a different personality; some were outgoing, some were shy, some spoke so softly they were barely audible, and some rambled on and on.

He listened attentively, trying his best to remember everyone's face and name.

The boy playing around by the window is named Liu Qiang. He comes from a junior high school in a small town. He has dark skin and a bright white smile. He said, "I came to the county's No. 1 High School because I didn't want to farm at home." The whole class laughed again.

The girl sleeping on the table was named Chen Yutong. She was from the county town, and her father was a small-time contractor. When she stood up, she was still a little dazed. She said, "My name is Chen Yutong," and then sat down.

The girl laughing the loudest in the first row is Sun Xiaolei, the class monitor—I don't know who elected her, maybe she was a monitor in junior high. She speaks crisply and clearly, and has a mature air about her.

There was another boy sitting in the last row corner. When he stood up, his voice was very low: "My name is Zhou Haitao, from..." He paused, as if he didn't know whether he should say it or not, "from Tangcun Township."

Tangcun Township. Lin Zhiyuan knew this place; it was the most remote township in the county, with winding mountain roads that took more than an hour to drive there.

He glanced at Zhou Haitao again. The boy was thin, with dark skin, and wore a faded T-shirt with the school's name printed on it; it was obviously someone else's hand-me-down. He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact.

After the self-introductions, there were still fifteen minutes left. Lin Zhiyuan opened his textbook and turned to the first lesson.

"Today we won't go into the text; let's talk about what Chinese language and literature is first."

He wrote two characters on the blackboard: Chinese Language.

"What do you think Chinese language and literature is?"

silence.

Liu Qiang raised his hand: "Language arts is about learning to recognize characters and writing compositions."

"Anything else?"

Sun Xiaolei raised her hand: "Chinese language is about learning the texts, and it's on the exams."

"Is there anything else?"

No one raised their hand anymore.

Lin Zhiyuan smiled: "What you said is all right, but not entirely. Chinese language is not just about recognizing characters, writing compositions, and learning texts. Chinese language is..." He thought for a moment, then wrote two more characters next to "Chinese language": "Life."

"Life?"

"Yes, life. The words you speak, the words you write, the books you read, the moments you daydream, and all the random thoughts in your mind—that's all language. Language isn't just something that happens in the classroom. It's in the moments when you're arguing with someone, when you're writing a letter to your mother, and when you're secretly in love with someone."

Some students laughed, and several girls exchanged glances, their faces turning slightly red.

"So," Lin Zhiyuan said, "I teach you Chinese not so that you can get high scores on exams. Of course, getting high scores is important. But more importantly, I hope that three years from now, you can speak properly, write properly, and be good people."

Just after he finished speaking, the bell rang to signal the end of get out of class.

"Alright, that's all for today. get out of class dismissed."

The class monitor called out "Stand up!" and the students jumped to their feet in a flurry, shouting, "Goodbye, teacher!"

As Lin Zhiyuan was tidying up his lesson plans, Sun Xiaolei ran up to him, grinning, and said, "Teacher Lin, your first lesson was quite interesting."

"Yeah?"

"It was a little funny at the beginning," she said before running away.

Lin Zhiyuan stood on the podium, looking at the empty classroom, and let out a long breath.

The first lesson is finally over.

五

At noon, Lin Zhiyuan went to the cafeteria for lunch.

Wang Jianguo sat down opposite him with his lunchbox in hand: "I heard you made a fool of yourself in your first class?"

How did you know?

"The school is only so big, what news can't get out?" Wang Jianguo took a bite of rice. "You shouted 'Same ball'? Hahaha, that's hilarious."

Lin Zhiyuan smiled awkwardly: "Luckily, I've made up for it."

"Not bad," Wang Jianguo said. "In my first class, I wrote 'mathematics' on the blackboard, and the chalk broke. I bent down to pick it up, and when I stood up, I bumped my head on the podium and got a bump on my forehead. The students laughed about it for a whole semester."

Lin Zhiyuan was amused.

"Honestly," Wang Jianguo put down his chopsticks, "for a new teacher's first lesson, it's a victory if nothing major goes wrong. Yours is a pretty good start. The students remember you, and in a good way."

How do you know it's good?

"Because your surname is Lin, they won't call you Teacher Lin anymore, they'll call you..." Wang Jianguo thought for a moment, "Teacher Qiu? Teacher Lin Qiu? Anyway, you'll have a nickname now."

Lin Zhiyuan gave a wry smile.

He had no classes in the afternoon, so he returned to his dormitory, lay on his bed, and recalled every detail of the morning: the slip of the tongue, the burst of laughter, the words he spoke, and the students' applause.

He mentally gave himself a score: barely passing.

But that feeling of standing on that platform, that feeling of fifty-odd pairs of eyes looking at you, that feeling of having people listen to and believe what you say—

It's amazing.

He suddenly remembered his high school Chinese teacher, surnamed Zhong. He was an old man who lectured slowly, but his eyes would light up whenever he talked about classical poetry and prose. Back then, he thought how wonderful it would be if one day he could make his students' eyes light up too.

Now, he stands at the starting point of this road.

The road ahead is long, but he is already on his way.