More than 30 years ago, the demand for childcare was high while public schools could not meet the demand. A teacher from Trung Vuong Secondary School boldly overcame difficulties and determined to open the first private preschool in Da Nang city. With efforts in care and education, the school has affirmed its position and developed into Duc Tri Kindergarten - Primary and Secondary School. That determined teacher is Meritorious teacher Le Thi Nga.
Decisive, strong
Meritorious teacher Le Thi Nga is now in her sixties but her spirit is always young because she says it is because she interacts and plays with students every day. In her spare time, Meritorious teacher Le Thi Nga confides about the ups and downs in building Duc Tri school today. “In the late 80s of the 20th century, leaving a young child behind to work with peace of mind was a big difficulty for my family as well as many families with young children in Da Nang city because the public kindergarten network was not enough. Many children just wandered around playing at home alone or left them with their grandparents to look after when their parents went to work, with so many dangers lurking.” Stemming from that need, Ms. Le Thi Nga cherished the idea of opening a kindergarten to raise her children properly. However, at that time, the concept of private schools was still very new because there were no regulations or policies. In September 1990, the Ministry of Education and Training issued Decision No. 55/QD-BGDDT regulating the operating regime of family child care groups, family kindergartens, private nurseries and private kindergartens.
A kindergarten class with the first 30 children was established in 1990, licensed by the Da Nang City Department of Education. The class had a distinct advantage over public schools at that time. The class was like a model of an indoor school, with the space of a family, grandparents, a garden, a fish pond, etc., and a teacher with expertise and pedagogical skills to teach, care for, and look after the children all day, pick up children early and drop them off late, and look after children all day on Thursday, so it was very convenient for the working hours of officials, civil servants, and workers. The initial quality of teaching, health care, and physical care for the children partly met the needs of parents, so more and more parents came.
Parents’ demand for sending their children to school has far exceeded the allowed size of kindergarten classes, but there is no document regulating the establishment of private kindergartens or primary schools. In response to the urgent need for parents to send their children to school, the Department of Education and Training of Quang Nam - Da Nang province has issued a decision to allow the establishment of Duc Tri Private School (pilot), which is allowed to accept kindergarten children and primary school students.
With experience in educational management and many years of teaching directly, Ms. Nga has many advantages in building goals and teaching plans, specifying requirements for each age of children, building educational care methods, orienting investment in building school facilities right at the family's home and preparing all conditions to keep up with the requirements in annual enrollment. In 2003, Duc Tri School achieved National standards, also the first private school in the country to achieve this level.
Passionate about the profession
Up to now, Duc Tri School has built a spacious facility located right on Trung Nu Vuong and Phan Chau Trinh streets with a scale of 50 classrooms at 3 levels: Kindergarten, Primary and Secondary.
At the age of over 60, excellent teacher Le Thi Nga is still working hard to build a strong school brand. Ms. Nga said that, in parallel with investing in facilities, the school focuses on investing in the quality of education, including the teaching staff. The teachers she recruited to the school are all dedicated to their profession, have professional qualifications and qualifications that meet or exceed the standards. The school always encourages teachers to self-study, improve their qualifications, expertise, and pedagogical skills, and regularly sends teachers to training programs organized by the education sector to meet the requirements of teaching according to the new general education program. Thanks to that, the quality of key education increases every year, and the school's students have won many international, national, and city-level awards.
In the 2021-2022 school year, the epidemic situation is complicated, students have to study online. The prolonged online learning, the first thing Ms. Nga worries about is the quality of learning and the psychological and physical development of students. “The children's online learning was caught up right after the opening day. Primary school students in grade 1 also had easy access to learning because the school had previously "tested" it during the summer. In the new school year, the class was divided into 2 groups to help teachers monitor students more easily. Therefore, the students studied very well. However, we did not expect the epidemic to last so long, the school and students were anxiously waiting for the day to go to school. At this time, the students showed signs of being "bored" with online learning because they wanted to go to school to study in person. They really missed school, teachers and friends," Ms. Nga recalled the time when the epidemic was complicated.
As the Principal, Ms. Nga herself is quite worried. Understanding that children are the most vulnerable group during the pandemic, she always encourages homeroom teachers and subject teachers to grasp their thoughts to promptly motivate them to study. In particular, during teaching hours, not only focus on studying the lessons in the program but also be creative and flexibly apply forms to help students not get bored, create closeness, and consider online learning as studying at school. Thanks to that, at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, the secondary school level has 60% students with excellent academic performance, 30% students with good academic performance, 99.8% students with good training results; the primary school level has 100% students completing the program.
With a talented "locomotive" like Teacher Le Thi Nga, Duc Tri School has achieved many high achievements in exams and competitions at all levels. Specifically, it won 63 awards in competitions for excellent students, young informatics, robothon at the city level and competitions organized by the Education Department in coordination with the Youth Union. What is impressive and thereby affirms the quality of education of the school is that in the entrance exam to grade 10 of the 2022-2023 school year, 95,871 TP3T students passed the high schools according to their wishes, 62,811 TP3T students passed the top high schools, 2 classes achieved a high school admission rate of 1001 TP3T, 8 students passed the Le Quy Don High School for the Gifted, of which 1 student was the valedictorian, 3 students were directly admitted to Phan Chau Trinh High School.
Looking back at the process of building and growing up of her “brainchild”, Teacher Le Thi Nga could not help but feel moved. “The Prime Minister, ministries and central agencies came to the locality and presented many flags and certificates of merit to Duc Tri School. In particular, the President awarded the Third Class Labor Medal and the Second Class Labor Medal. All of this is the effort of the school’s staff, teachers and employees. But most importantly, parents trust Duc Tri, their children study well and love this school, that is the happiness of teachers like us”, Ms. Nga emotionally shared.
SOURCE: DA NANG NEWSPAPER
DIEU PHUONG