Narrator: Zhang Yi, Faculty of Artificial Intelligence in Education, doctoral student and party member.
“A man who has great learning is a teacher. A man who has good morality is a model.”This is what we often hear from Mr. Yang. Over the past 26 years, Mr.Yang has always taken this as his motto and stuck to the front line of education. And he has won many honorary titles such as "Good Teacher in My Mind", "Excellent Class Teacher" and the Chinese first session of "Mingde Teacher" . He is the secretary general of the Teaching Steering Committee of educational technology major in colleges and universities of the Ministry of Education, and director of National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center for liberal arts synthesis of CCNU——professor Yang Jiumin.
In 1991, Yang jiumin, a 22-year-old teacher, set foot on the road of teaching. From a student to a teacher, from sitting under the stage listening to teaching on the platform, this change of identity gave him a deeper understanding of the teacher.
Knowledge is essential to a teacher. In daily life, Mr. Yang often tells us that excellent business is a "required course" to become a competent teacher. During his 26 years of teaching career, he always stuck to the style of thinking diligently, loving to explore and attaching importance to practice, and also devoted himself to the research of teachers and education. He not only successively presided over the provincial excellent course "Instructional System Design", national network education excellent resource sharing course "Modern Educational Technology", national teacher education excellent resource sharing course "Application of Modern Educational Technology", undergraduate first-class courses and other projects, but also took the lead in applying for and gained the comprehensive reform pilot project of educational technology major in Hubei Province, Hubei Province Famous teacher studio. In particular, he can still remember every detail of the experience that he applied for the "liberal arts comprehensive experimental teaching center of CCNU" as a national experimental teaching demonstration center.
During the critical period of application, Mr. Yang moved his bed to the office, ate and slept in it and the average daily sleeping time of him was only 4 or 5 hours. Many teachers saw that he was haggard and his hair turned gray in a few days. They were very worried about his health, while he did not care about it at all. As long as thinking that through persistent efforts, he can win another national experimental teaching demonstration center for the school, he felt that his efforts were worth it.
Everything comes to him who waits. With the continuous improvement of his major, Mr. Yang won the second prize of the national teaching achievement award, the first prize of the teaching achievement award of colleges and universities in Hubei Province, the special prize of the teaching achievement award of CCNU and many other prizes.
In addition to further exploration, Mr. Yang often tells us that we should always be in awe of teaching.
During his tenure as vice president of teaching, he continued to squeeze out time to ensure that he could take five to six courses a year despite there are many complicated daily affairs to do. Later, he served as the director of the liberal arts comprehensive national experimental teaching demonstration center, but the increase of affairs still failed to break his persistence in first teaching line. For Mr.Yang, regardless of scientific research or administrative affairs, teaching is always the foundation of his career.
In the long-term first teaching line, Mr. Yang not only accumulated rich teaching experiences, but also formed a unique teaching style. All the students who have attended his course know that Mr. Yang particularly likes to emphasize the awareness of asking questions. He often says that a good answer is not as good as a good question. We should pay more attention to innovation ability. He emphasized that it’s important to keep pace with the time and opposed the teaching concept of doing things once and for all and strove to bring us newer and better curriculum content every year, hoping to inspire our innovative thinking. For the cultivation of students, the students who have talked with Mr. Yang can feel his unique way of education. He always patiently listens to the voice of students. In his office, students can talk and communicate with him as friends. He once said, "In fact, there can be no bad students among the students. There can only be those who have been wrongly magnified shortcomings and failed to develop their strengths while avoiding their weaknesses.
In the class, Mr.Yang always encourage us to think independently and respect our thoughts, hoping all of us could spread our thought bravely. For the students who is shy, he always asks their thoughts and cares more about them. For the students who is outgoing, he barely restrain them. He makes his effort to encourage us to communicate freely. Many students who has attended his class said that Mr.Yang's class is both relaxing and nervous. The nervous is that Mr.Yang will pick up students to answer questions randomly and you couldn't sneak off. The relaxing is that he won’t force us to remember everything written on the board and he always teaches the knowledge with his own life and experience which makes it easy to understand. For example, the Robert Mills Gagn's teaching methods in nine stages, he will introduce how he understood it when he studied it and the way his classmates used through "first world" to make up a story.
Looking back on Mr. Yang's class, many senior students who graduated said,”Mr. Yang is good at heuristic teaching, and often encourages us to actively associate and dare to ask questions. His flexible teaching style and novel and unique teaching methods give us a lot of inspiration. In his class, we really feel that we have applied the theory we have learned into practice. What we learn is not only professional knowledge, but also thinking mode and expression ability. We benefited from it a lot.”
Outside the class, Mr. Yang is even more considerate to us, often care about us with love.
Once, a normal student in Grade 2007, whose father suffered from an accident but he didn’t have money to go home. Mr. Yang immediately gave a lot of money and entrusted someone to bring the student 2000 yuan so that he could go back to deal with the later affairs as quickly as possible. Another time, a classmate accidentally broke his ankle bone when playing badminton. Because of the inconvenience of movement, it took him a lot of trouble to go to the hospital to change the medicine every time. After knowing this, Mr. Yang specially took time to drive the student to the hospital to change the dressing until he recovered. Another senior student was in hospital because of illness during her postgraduate education. After hearing about her situation, Miss Yang often went to the hospital to visit her in his spare time to care about her and enhance her confidence. Whenever we encounter difficulties, Mr. Yang will take the instant action to care about and ask our condition, and try his best to provide us with the greatest help.
He firmly believes in the power of teaching by words and deeds, and always believes that teachers are a mirror of their students, and the teacher's character can determine the student's. He advocates the we should balance the work and the rest, and refuses to work all the time. He often teaches us that "we are either on the road of study or on the road of sports" and "only those who can rest can work". He also encourages us to take active exercise in our spare time, and he is a good practitioner. On the court, he is an athlete with strong physique and skilful skills. He is also a good coach with meticulous and patient teaching methods. We will all agree that he is intelligent and athletic when we talk about Mr. Yang. Just like a graduate said in his blog, "Mr. Yang's encouraging eyes, praising words, understanding smiles and wholehearted helps are unforgettable to me."
We should always have the desire to explore, the heart of awe, and the feeling of love, and strive to make us all grow sturdily. Mr. Yang practices his idea with his own behavior.
Translator: Shu Tianle
Date: April 11, 2021
