As mentioned above, I came to Mapo Middle School in Sept. 1972, when the autumn semester began. Biao Lin Block had just collapsed and the cultural revolutionary factionists, the Gang of the Four, were still in power (the gang of four: Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, Shanghai Gang: Hongwen Wang, Chunqiao Zhang and Wenyuan Yao) and the Cultural Revolution was still in progress, one movement after another: first criticizing Biao Lin and Confucius, then learning from Xiaojinzhuang (a village near Tianjin, Qing Jiang’s typical case) and singing the model Beijing Operas. I had no interest in those activities, which might be described as “whatever the storm got up, I sat quietly on the angling boat” and devoted all my energy to studying independently and teaching work. In 1976, the Gang of Four were arrested, and the social order was regained gradually. In the first half of 1977, the Education Bureau of Tongshan County issued a notice that a teaching experience communicating meeting would be held, asking all schools to recommend advanced teachers to summarize and write materials. Headmaster Chuanwu Yang felt that my work was excellent and I was able to write something, so he asked me to summarize my five-year teaching work and write the material reported to the Bureau. Time flied very fast, it was five years since I began to teach in Mapo and I myself wanted to complete a written summary. In that period of years when you wrote something, you had to relate the guidance of Zedong Mao. I had read Mao’s two philosophy pamphlets several times, one being “On Practice”, the other “Contradiction Theory”, so I utilized Mao’s philosophy thought to summarize my work. The subject of the article was how I used dialectical methods to pay attention to all aspects and did well all kinds of jobs relating to educating and teaching. It was not long before the good news came that all the material reviewers unanimously held the view that my summary was well-written and reached a certain high level and decided that I would be a speaker on the meeting. My Hard working, including studying for five years was admitted, which made Meilan Zhang and me very happy. First I attended the advanced teacher representative meeting of Tongshan County and addressed the assembly. On the meeting I was recommended to be a representative to take part in the top teacher meeting of Xuzhou District.
In that year, our second son was born on June 22 (Lunar year On 25th of the fifth month) and was not named until September. We wanted to join the two names of our sons into a Chinese phrase. I felt that we were just in our energetic age, and should work and continue to study with youthful vigour and enthusiasm. We believed in the admonition that the divine principle is sure to reward your diligence. No pain, no gain. So we decided to change the first son’s 立(stand) to 力(power) and the second son was called 量(Liang). 力量(liliang) means strength. We hoped them to become persons with certain strength by working diligently.
力量(liliang) and sister (Aunty's daughter) Chenxia Yu
Along with the social order restoration, the school teaching work began to move on the track gradually, and English teaching began to be paid attention to. Some students showed interest in this subject and there were always some of them around us asking about some questions about the English language. In the second half of the year 1978, we received a notice from the Tongshan Education Bureau that an English contest for Senior Grade One of the whole county would be held. Meilan Zhang and I decided to organize some of the English fanciers and coach them in our spare time. Teaching English has something in common with teaching other subjects, which is the teacher should design the appropriate stairs for the students to climb upward step by step. The teacher puts forward a goal of a height and let the students try to reach it by jumping. If the goal is too high or the step is too steep for the student to reach by jumping or climb on it with his or her full strength, they will lose their interest and consequently give up their endeavor. The teacher should work hard to design the teaching plan of every period. The particularity of teaching English lies in the more repetitions than other subjects. In the final analysis, the method of learning a language is repetition. Only by means of repetitions could you grasp a word, an expression or a language point. The ways of repetition should be various and we should try our best to avoid the same way to repeat, otherwise the students will be bored with monotonousness. The students’ study power is always changing, so the teacher cannot only do one thing --- teaching, he or she should make friends with his or her students，get to know their psychology, encourage them and help them to gain new study power, esp. those who are not full grown up and are teenagers in the middle school. In addition, teachers should themselves have good emotions. Teaching English and learning English are both difficult. I have difficulties and all the others who teach or learn English have also difficulties. Our school has difficulties and other schools also have. The victory belongs to those teachers and students who have patience, persevere in their endeavor and dare to overcome the difficulties. Meilan Zhang and I began from those aspects, worked conscientiously and tried our best to obtain good achievements. The result of the contest came, which made headmaster Chuanwu Yan very happy. Our total score was the first of the whole county, and the individual first was Fanying Dong (female), who won the top prize. Lishun Jiang (male) won the second prize and Zhaoying Wang (female), the third prize. After the restoration of the college entrance examination, the three entered colleges and became English majors successively. When we resigned, they were teaching English in Tongshan Zhengji Middle School (the key middle school of Jiangsu Province), Tongshan Middle School and the 31st Middle School of Xuzhou City and were all in charge of English discipline.
At that time, coaching the students to take part in the contest did not have any reward. The students obtained prizes with the teachers getting nothing. We had to dedicate ourselves. The Mapo Middle School got a lot of things as encouragements, such as acousticloudspeakers, projection machine and etc. The school didn’t give us any prize, however someone said this and that and held the view that Chuanwu Yang was partial to us, which I will deal with in the later section, summarization of five tastes in my career.
The achievements in the English contest helped us stand in the English teaching circle in Tonshan County. People had to change their thought toward us whose major was not English. It was also a precondition that we were reassigned to the key middle school of the Tongshan County, the Zhengji Middle School after the restoration of the college entrance examination.
Jan. 5 2009 in Melbourne
Proofreading Feb. 9, 2012 in Chicago
Uploading Aug. 4, 2023 in Xuzhou
