Ever since "Our Family Zihan" became a popular internet meme, these two types of people are the only ones who can't laugh out loud——One is the person whose name is really Zihan, and the other is the person who faces Zihan every day.We're having fun, they're looking in the mirror. Those front-line teachers who face "Zihan" and "Zihan's mother" every day will summarize their situation in similar words: There are too many hardships, and it can't be finished in three days and three nights.
I spoke with four education practitioners. Among them are three elementary school teachers and a former staff member of a K12 education institution.
Lin Xiao is a primary school Chinese teacher and head teacher in a central city with five years of teaching experience. In her words, she was in a school with a low-quality student body, and social workers from all walks of life constituted the group of parents she had to deal with on a daily basis.
"Zihan's Mother" that everyone watches for fun is a daily reality they have to face every day.
In reality, some parents did ask Lin Xiao why their children were bitten by mosquitoes when they went to school. Even though she is young and energetic, she is not used to her parents:
"The class is on the first floor. It's normal for mosquitoes to be present when it's humid. I was bitten too. If you're worried, I can put a bottle of toilet water in the class. If you're not worried, you can bring a bottle of toilet water to your child to go to school."
Screenshot of "Zihan's Mother" circulated online
In addition, it is a great gathering of talents.
A careless child lost a hat, and his parents came to the group to ask: Who took my child’s hat? He also emphasized, "Don't worry about it now, let society educate you when you grow up." Later, Lin Xiao discovered that the child had lost it carelessly.
Some children forgot to bring a water bottle. When the parents sent a message to the class teacher and did not reply immediately, they immediately went to the principal and complained: This teacher deliberately did not let my children drink water and deliberately let the children go to school thirsty.
Image source interviewee
In educational institutions outside school, teachers are also on tenterhooks.
Ke Ke Ya is a former K12 education institution worker located in a first-tier city, responsible for 5-6-year-old children in the kindergarten transition stage. She has also met parents like "Zihan's mother".
When the organization organizes outings for children every month, some parents will ask: Why aren't our children smiling? Are you unhappy?
According to Kodakya's observations over the years, "Zihan" type children probably grow up in the "6+1" model that their grandparents used to raise children. Parents' overindulgence will directly affect their children's behavior and habits.
She once met a very introverted "Zi Han". The teachers initially thought it was because the children were not good at talking, but after a while they found out that the parents were too "helicopter": they had to worry about everything, they had to ask questions about everything, they opened and shut their mouths to ask whether they had eaten today, or if they were thirsty, did they drink water?
Later, after getting in touch with him, the teachers discovered that "Zihan" was actually a very normal child, but his parents had held him too tightly and stretched the rubber band to the limit.
Yiyi is a primary school English teacher and head teacher in the Pearl River Delta region with five years of teaching experience. She also has a similar experience: for children like Zihan, stay-at-home mothers are generally responsible for more. Because the mother is too focused and mentally sensitive, she is always worried about her children having accidents at school.
"But it also depends on the situation. One is when the child is normal and the parents think too much; the other is when the child has an unpleasant incident at school and adds fuel to the fire when they go home and complains to the parents."
She met a parent who asked for leave because his child was "hit on the head by a piece of rubber", and her colleagues encountered something even weirder. When the class was assigned a number, a transfer student happened to be assigned number 4. The parents refused to accept anything they said because the number 4 was unlucky. The teachers had no choice but to complain in private: Will the child be able to enter fourth grade next year? Isn’t it also unlucky?
Some parents rushed directly to the canteen to see what their children had eaten for lunch, and even got into a fight with the canteen aunt because they had too little rice.
The endless emergence of "Zihan's mother" makes the listeners sad and shed tears, but this is not the most troublesome thing - the "Zihan" in the class even makes the teacher scratch his head.
Lin Xiao, who currently teaches first and fourth grade children, has different descriptions of children in these two age groups.
The problems among children in lower grades are more trivial. For example, those who wet their pants in class, those who cannot keep up intellectually, those who run around in class after ADHD attacks, those whose oral expressions are unclear and need help from their deskmates to translate. You took my ruler, and he took my eraser. The teacher had to spend part of his time every day to be the "class judge."
There was one child who impressed Lin Xiao deeply. The boy's father has been a victim of domestic violence for a long time, which has caused the child to develop violent tendencies and emotional disorders. He often beats classmates who are weaker than him, and even attacks the private parts of other boys, forcing his classmates into corners for bullying many times. In addition, he also stole things and lied. Every time the teacher criticized him, he showed no concern, and Lin Xiao was helpless.
Children in higher grades have more ideas and are more frightened by teachers.
Lin Xiao started a rap club for children after school and wanted to play with them. Unexpectedly, a fourth-grade girl in the rap club made up a rap using dirty words to insult her.
"Children today are much precocious than before." Lin Xiao told me that some boys in the fifth and sixth grade would write pornographic articles in private. The content was about boys taking girls to KTV and holding them down. There are also some senior children who use their mobile phones to watch pornographic videos similar to AV. "Maybe they are not looking for it specifically. Sometimes pages like that will pop up on the web."
Another teacher who made a fortune had a similar experience. She works as a primary school Chinese teacher and head teacher in a new first-tier city with six years of teaching experience.
Some children in the class saw videos like "Subject 3" on Douyin, and would imitate the dance after class. As a result, one child sprained his foot and was unable to do morning exercises. You can never imagine how quickly children absorb information from the outside world.
In the fourth-grade class where Fa Cai is in charge, a boy also has violent tendencies and emotional disorders. He often turns over tables and hits people in the class. Fa Cai brought her child up from the first grade. She knew in her heart that "the child is kind and simple in nature, but he cannot control himself physically."
When I asked about getting rich, why didn’t I tell the child’s parents? She expressed her distress.
At the beginning, she also tried to give feedback to her parents, but the parents just responded with "I will go home and beat him up." Later, she persuaded her many times and even hinted to the parents to take their children to the hospital to check for trace elements, but the parents remained indifferent. "If I directly tell parents to take their children to the hospital for medical treatment, the parents will report the teacher for discriminating against the child and suspecting that the child has a mental disorder."
Teachers will encounter even more absurd parents than "Mother Zihan". They are crouching tigers, hiding dragons, and they use big moves from time to time.
In Lin Xiao’s school, police cars are often seen at the school gate because “parents nowadays like to call the police directly when dealing with problems.”
For example, two children got into a fight at school, and one parent wanted to rush into the school to teach the other child a lesson; for example, a boy was bullied at school and used a genius phone watch to "shake him up." As a result, the child's father led a dozen people from the next village to rush into the school to settle the score. Neither the principal nor the security guard could stop him, so they had to call in the police.
A child broke his skin at school, and his parents called to question Lin Xiao. She was attending a friend's wedding, so she had to reply in a hurry that she would go back and investigate. As a result, her parents thought that the teacher did not pay enough attention to their children, so they called the police and threatened her, "I know your principal, so just wait to lose your job."
There is another parent who is Lin Xiao's biggest problem in the past few years of work. She still doesn't understand why her parents are so paranoid.
The cause of the incident was that the parents wanted to transfer their younger son to the class of their eldest daughter's head teacher. Lin Xiao did not agree. After all, changing classes right after the start of school would cause other parents to misunderstand the teacher's teaching problems. As a result, the parent bombarded her with paranoid messages, begging her to "let the child go", and finally even complained to the principal.
Parents believe that teachers are "targeting" their children, not calling their children to ask questions in class, and deliberately not giving their children a good seat in the seating arrangement. Lin Xiao has a rule in the class. If you perform well, you can collect 5 cartoon stickers and exchange them for small gifts. Pencils, books, and stationery are all prepared by Lin Xiao at his own expense. But in the eyes of parents, this is the teacher "using cheap things to send our children away."
In order to transfer the class, the parents resorted to slander, rumors, and intimidation. Finally, Lin Xiao was called to the principal's office for questioning, and finally cried in grievance.
Another teacher made a fortune and met a "professional blackmailer".
The child broke his glasses while playing with his classmates, and the parent immediately demanded 5,000 yuan from other parents. Later, the child knocked out his front teeth by the flower bed. The surveillance video happened to show another boy running behind him, so the parents concluded that it was the boy behind him who was chasing their child, and directly filed a claim for 30,000 yuan. After the negotiation failed, he turned around and claimed 50,000 yuan from the school.
From the school leader to the head teacher, I was tortured back and forth by this parent for more than half a year. The principal once proposed the idea of sharing the compensation equally with the teacher. This made Fa Cai couldn't help but ask: "Why?"
There is another child in the class who comes from a single-parent family. The mother is very controlling over the child. One day, the childcare teacher posted a photo of the children winning awards in the group. A few minutes later, Facai received a call from this mother: Why didn’t my child smile? She must have been bullied at school.
Subsequently, the parent immediately traveled across the city, from his workplace to the school, and found accountability for making a fortune.
Fa Cai, who was confused, said that there was nothing unusual about his child at school and he also played with his classmates after class. But the parents insisted on their own judgment: the child must have been bullied at school, and even made up a news story about "school security molesting girls." After many investigations and inquiries about getting rich, the parents reluctantly admitted, "I forgot where I heard about it."
Later, the mother became more and more controlling and asked the school to provide all daily surveillance videos and even called the police. She kept bombarding her with messages: No one is allowed to take away the child except me. Fa Cai promised many times.
Finally, Fa Cai found the girl and asked the girl very seriously: Do you think someone is bullying you?
The girl thought for a long time and gave an answer: my mother.
The responsible person still found the girl's mother to talk to, but the parents exploded: Why is the child so good in kindergarten, getting little red flowers every day, but not so good in elementary school? Become ordinary? No longer number one?
There is a lot I want to say about getting rich, but I don’t know where to start.
Teachers generally recognize parents who are willing to take responsibility for their children, but not every parent can fulfill this most basic obligation.Many parents choose to leave problems to teachers, as if the school is a self-help machine to solve problems——
Throw in the primitive child and a perfect filial son will automatically spit out. If not, it's the teacher's problem.
Normally, Chinese language teachers serve as head teachers in primary schools.
Therefore, the legendary "worst teacher start" is Chinese teacher + head teacher. If you are young, single, unmarried and have no children, then congratulations, there will be more arduous chores on you.
In addition to the article "Only the Animal Husbandry Bureau does not assign tasks to teachers," a report on Phoenix.com this year, "Frontline Teachers Pretend to Teach," also hit the screens. I thought I was mentally prepared, but I was still shocked when I heard the person retelling it.
First of all, front-line teachers have to face a lot of “administrative work” that has nothing to do with teaching.
Lin Xiao laughed at himself, saying that the head teacher was someone who performed for other civil servants and was engaged in meaningless repetitive work every day. The Chinese teacher was also good at words and often wrote documents, papers, and surveys for the leaders. Fa Cai also told me that the class teacher’s job is to “fill in forms and write notebooks.” The notebooks are so thick that ordinary people can’t imagine them, and they are endless.
Safety log, class teacher's handbook, team meeting activity records, morning and afternoon temperature checks, training of excellent students and assisting poor students, safety education manual...
Today's teaching work is all about "leaving traces on everything". When you open the photo album on your mobile phone, it is full of screenshots, signatures and notifications. The sound of DingTalk and corporate WeChat makes your scalp numb.
Learn anti-drugs, learn the Constitution, learn fire prevention, learn online safety, learn hygiene, learn to prevent drowning, learn to prevent telecommunications fraud...
Not only must we preach to students, but we must also take photos, write materials, save them, create public accounts, and write beautiful articles. Or arrange it for parents to watch with their children, and then keep and take photos, collecting them one by one.
50 children means 50 screenshots. The school urges the teacher, and the teacher calls the parents. Before every holiday, a safety agreement must be signed with parents, and each parent must sign, clock in, and answer questions.
Image source interviewee
What impressed me the most was that the selection of "good people" in the district where the school was located was also sent to the class teacher, and the school assigned students to vote for two of the candidates. Fa Cai complained: "I don't even know these two people, so I say I am also a good person, can you vote for me?"
The "one helmet, one belt" system that many front-line teachers have complained about has also been implemented on the heads of class teachers.
Yiyi told me that every morning before going to school, inspectors would catch students and parents who were not wearing helmets at the school gate. After they were caught, the information would be registered and included in the class assessment, and eventually the class teacher's performance points would be deducted.
This is not the most outrageous thing.
Yiyi had previously collected the types of water heaters in the homes of all the children in the class. The unexpected task made her laugh: "I don't even know what type of water heater my own home is."
There are also "superior departments requiring" that each child supervise the safety of a motor vehicle. Parents need to report their own license plate number in the group. If they don't have a car, report an electric car. If they don't even have an electric car, report the neighbor's license plate number - these confusing operations make Yiyi confused.
Teachers are the last load-bearing wall of all grassroots work. Because teachers connect children, they are equivalent to connecting the smallest basic unit of "family". In large systems, they are cellular workers capable of penetrating capillaries.
Compared with teaching, "safety" is more the top priority of educational practitioners.
For example, in the recent discussion about the "ten minutes between classes", the focus of the debate was on "Why are children not allowed to move freely during the break?" But from the teacher's perspective, this matter becomes like a dumb man eating coptis: "We don't want to take up these 10 minutes in class, we also want to rest," Facai complained to me.
Lin Xiao's school's plan for the 10-minute recess is to have children take turns to be on guard duty in the stairwell to supervise their classmates not to run or fight. "If the leader discovers a child running around in any class, the class teacher's performance salary will be deducted. As long as it is a child's problem, it will eventually become the class teacher's problem."
The school's concerns are more out of self-preservation.
In Yiyi's class, there was an accident involving injuries during class. After the lunch break, two boys chased each other in the corridor and broke their bones after just jumping off the steps.
If you are hit on the head in a physical education class, it is considered a safety accident, and the teacher in charge of the class must write a statement about the situation. You can relax when you meet parents who are easy to talk to, but you can make the class teacher lose your skin when you meet parents who are difficult to deal with. Therefore, no matter how big or good the playground is, the school cannot let the children play and have fun.
Education practitioners in off-campus institutions are also extremely sensitive to the word "safety."
Kodakya told me that compared to teachers in schools, agency teachers and parents are closer to the relationship between clients and Party B. Therefore, agency teachers cannot let any children leave their sight. If they leave, another teacher must keep an eye on the place where they cannot see.
Teachers are more nervous than anyone else during the few minutes they go to the toilet between classes. The male teacher kept an eye on the men's toilet, and the female teacher kept an eye on the women's toilet: "Remember how many children go into each toilet. If a child doesn't come out for a long time, he must be doing something inside." In addition, all teachers must supervise children in the corridors not to run around.
Sometimes surveillance protects not just students, but teachers as well.
The bones of students in lower grades are relatively fragile, and the probability of danger is very high, and teachers will be in a situation where they can't argue. Kodakya told me that there was a child who habitually dislocated his joint when he pushed the ground with his hand during physical education class. The institution immediately sent the child to the hospital. Later, after watching the surveillance, it was discovered that the teacher was indeed innocent - no one knew that the child had habitual dislocation and could not predict the accident.
Sometimes two children bump into each other and their noses start to bleed; other children are in the teething period and swallow their teeth as soon as they collide. Kodakya can actually understand parents' "making a fuss out of a molehill". After all, the cost of raising a child is too high nowadays.
The school is not a place that provides shelter to teachers. Instead, it will have a special sense of presence when performance is deducted.
Lin Xiao told me that primary school teachers, especially head teachers, basically do not ask for sick leave. But they are also the group most susceptible to illness - infectious diseases occur frequently in winter, and children often infect teachers. Even if teachers are sick, they have to wear masks and continue to teach because it is too troublesome to adjust classes among colleagues. A colleague has been taking traditional Chinese medicine since he started working as a teacher, and has become ill. Another colleague has a throat cyst that has never recovered.
Thyroid nodules and breast nodules are the good friends of people's teachers.
Fa Cai developed a 5cm thyroid nodule due to excessive work intensity. He just had surgery last year. She also witnessed a teacher who had just had a caesarean section and wanted to take 15 days of maternity leave in accordance with the policy. Instead, a female leader asked: What, haven't you taken enough?
What makes getting rich even more disappointing is that it is not easy to make extra money as a class teacher.
Every morning, the class teacher sends a selfie to prove that he is in the class. "I don't understand. I'm already a class teacher. How can I still miss these 20 minutes of work?" Fu Cai's husband told me that as a teacher's family member, it is common for her to get up with her at 6:30 every morning.
For the sake of class hygiene evaluation, Fa Cai needs to ensure that the entire class cannot have a scrap of paper on the ground between 7 a.m. and 12 noon, otherwise they will be named and criticized. In the depth of winter in December, students had to clean tables, door frames, glass, and cracks every day just to cope with an unknown inspection.
Fa Cai felt both angry and sad:“No one has ever taken care of our teaching as seriously as we take care of the garbage.”
The class teacher's monthly subsidy was only 500 yuan, and in the end it was deducted here and there, and there was basically not much left. If you want to get that precious five hundred yuan, you must become a class teacher without any flaws - but any front-line teacher who manages 50 children (or 50 families) cannot guarantee that.
Lin Xiao told me that the class teacher's rules and regulations alone are 15 pages long. She did some calculations: "Originally, teachers within the establishment received a performance salary of 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a year, but so far, we have only been paid for 2020. The state has not paid us a performance salary for three consecutive years."
Compared with the head teacher, the other associate subject teachers were obviously much more relaxed. Among them, the art teacher is the easiest, because the physical education teacher is responsible for sports meets, and the music teacher is responsible for cultural activities. Only the art teacher is an "outsider" in the school, forming two distinct extremes with the class teacher.
Whenever I think of the associate subject teachers in school, I feel jealous and unfair about getting rich. Once, a student insulted the art teacher in art class, but the art teacher didn't take it seriously and didn't intend to intervene.
"He shook off his clothes and left, but the character that the child gradually developed was the bitter fruit that the head teacher swallowed. If you don't care about the child, he will get worse, but if you give him a little intervention, the child can actually be corrected."
Between the two iron plates of parents and school is a narrow space for teachers to live.
Today's home-school relationship is more like a game between Party A's customers and Party B's workers.The authority of teachers gradually dissipated and became a part of the service industry.
Lin Xiao told me that schools often have serious and responsible teachers. Because of their strict teaching methods, students go home and complain, and their parents report them directly to the Education Bureau. Even the children in the fortune class followed suit and learned the trick of "I want to report the teacher to the Education Bureau."
I originally set my heart towards the bright moon, but the bright moon shines on the ditch. After several attempts to scare the monkeys, the hands and feet of the teachers were invisibly tied up, as if they were in an open panopticon.
What several teachers can't understand is why parents are unwilling to recognize the fact that your child is not the only child in the world and does not deserve all the attention.
The thing Lin Xiao heard the most was, "Everyone says my child is excellent." Even if their children lie, fight, or behave badly, parents will still favor their children unconditionally. Parents even teach their children to cheat in exams in order to get their children to be selected as Young Pioneers.
In order to analyze the child's situation with parents, Facai made a series of data and charts, but the parents' feedback was only: "The child knows everything at home, why can't he know it at school?" Facai translated for me. The subtext of the parents was to blame the school and teachers for not educating their children well.
Yiyi has similar troubles. In the childhood of those born in the 80s and 90s, their parents completely trusted their teachers, and even if the teacher was wrong, they were right. But now the situation has completely reversed, and social elites and senior intellectuals know better how to hold students accountable: "Parents themselves are college graduates, and their academic qualifications are similar to those of teachers, or even better than our teachers. Therefore, parents have their own teaching concepts, culture and knowledge, and they often dissatisfy teachers' teaching methods and management methods."
Yiyi is also very aggrieved. "As teachers, we and parents should be on a united front. We all want our children to become better. But some parents always feel that teachers will do something against their children."
Kodakya also told me something similar: "Most teachers are motivated by love. Whether it is career choice or children, they want the best for the children." Among them, there are several types of parents who are very difficult to deal with: one is those who are overly doted on by 6+1 families, and the other is the parents who have achieved class promotion through diligent study and settled in first-tier cities, and have high expectations for their children's education. "Their attitude will be correspondingly higher, and they will have more and more detailed requirements for schools, teachers and institutions."
So a conflict arose - the school and parents asked the teacher for his grades, and the teacher was burdened with ten thousand chores. If you are unlucky enough to have an open class, you will have to spend a lot of time preparing lessons and writing lesson plans in private. When it comes to open classes, they all complain endlessly.
The various teaching methods have caused teachers at the grassroots level to devote a lot of energy. "Every two years, something new will come out. It used to be large-unit teaching, and then it was interdisciplinary teaching. To achieve results at the top, it is the teachers who shoulder this task at the grassroots level. The open class is held for a month. It is actually a performance course." Apart from performances, the open class is basically not helpful to the teaching itself. It is either a course that has been taught three or four times, or it has to find time to teach it again.
In Yiyi's school, there is a high-end "class grinding team". The so-called "class grinding" requires teachers to write down every sentence to be said in class, predict students' answers, and then give specific responses. "You must speak word by word, every sentence, even the connecting words, and not a single word is wrong." Yiyi told me that the open class will select 5-10 outstanding students from each class to form a brand new class, which is "an opportunity for top students to perform."
There are also a series of new rules and slang derived from the current environment. For example, "examination" cannot be directly called "examination" and can only be replaced by "assignment". On the day I talked to Fa Cai, the school had taken an exam, but parents didn’t know about it—no information about the “examination” could be sent out, either written or verbally.
Three front-line teachers also experienced varying degrees of professional burnout.
There are a few sayings circulating in the teacher circle: "Respect the fate of others" and "Educate only those who are destined to be educated."
Facai was also enthusiastic when he first started working. There are 50 children in the class, and she insists on writing small essays to give feedback to their parents one by one every day. By now, if a parent doesn't care about his children, he won't take the initiative to send a message for a whole semester.
I once worked as a Chinese teacher in Australia. Before entering this public school, I also cherished the educational ideal of Love & Peace: "I thought that children all over the world were the same. As long as they were in the same age group, their cognitions should be similar, and we must adhere to the education of love. Now I deeply regret my remarks at the time. You cannot love, and the consequence of love is that children will step on your head and shit."
When Yiyi first graduated, he was full of enthusiasm and imagined that he could influence every student with his patience and love. Later, I slowly realized that I had wasted a lot of hard work: "Some children really have no way to influence them. We still have to admit that people are indeed divided into three levels."
It seems that what supports them to continue is the winter and summer vacations to extend their lives, a stable organization, or the precious sense of connection with students.
Yiyi also admitted: "You want to say that they are completely tired, but that's not the case. Except for a very small number of particularly annoying children, most children are cute, considerate, and have a sense of accomplishment sometimes."
Kodakya also described it to me, and the warmth of a five- or six-year-old child is also true. Sometimes she would "act coquettishly" to the children: "Stop making trouble, look at the teacher's hands are pricked." The children would come around and ask anxiously: "Teacher, are you okay?"
This is a moment she still recalls with sweetness, years after leaving the education industry.
Teaching is a job that has been regarded as a golden job by generations of Chinese.
A workplace environment that is respectable, stable, secure, and deals with children is simple and pure. The number of applicants for teacher qualification certificates every year speaks for itself.
After truly becoming a teacher, there are countless turbulent undercurrents between colleagues, superiors and parents.
The pain of grassroots teachers is isolated in the stratosphere. They can only occasionally poke their heads out of their desks and complain a few words in exhausted voices. What every teacher fears most is that during the break away from campus, the ringtone of his cell phone will suddenly dance on his nerves.
In October this year, a 23-year-old female teacher in Zhengzhou committed suicide. Her suicide note read as follows: "I never thought that being a primary school teacher would be so difficult. I really want to teach and educate students when facing students, but the work of the school, the activities of the school, and the inspections of the leaders make us graduates who directly become class teachers without training feel like we are in a prison."
Yiyi's school leaders explicitly prohibited teachers from discussing the matter publicly. Facai heard a gossip among the leaders discussing this matter: "Today's young people are too selfish. They are not afraid of death. Are they still afraid of going to work?"
In an era before WeChat groups, DingTalk, and PPT, in an era when teachers did not need to be on call 24 hours a day, in an era when the authority of teachers has not dissipated—teaching is indeed an unquestionable, noble, and unquestionable profession.
But is it still?
These teachers who have "come ashore" are being burned by the fire on the shore.
They couldn't give an answer.