Viet Nam News
by Tien Minh and Ha Nguyen
Now at the age of 85, veteran teacher Nguyen Tra has devoted himself to teaching poor and disabled students for almost 25 years.
The sight of disabled children and street children asking locals in Phuong Lien Ward of Ha Noi’s Dong Da District for directions to Tra’s house in order to learn how to read and write, is so common that everyone in the ward knows about the teacher.
Whether it is hot or cold, Tra still teaches a group of about 20 students at the Trung Tu Communal House.
Tra recalls when he was retiring in the 1990s, he was asked to join the management board of the Communal House. One day a woman brought her child to the house to play and learn. But the child could not finish his mathematics exercises because they were very difficult. His mother asked Tra for help. Several days later, the child again brought his math problems and asked Tra for help.
Gradually, members of the board, one after another, brought their descendants to Tra to ask him to teach them difficult lessons.
The Huong Thien class was officially established soon after, Tra said.
Every Thursday and Saturday at 8am, children in the ward arrive at the Communal House for Tra to help them deal with difficult lessons.
“My aim is not to impart new knowledge but to guide them to understand difficult exercises while focussing on educating them by telling them stories about obeying their parents, and how to conduct themselves to be polite to adults and live peacefully with friends,” Tra said.
A student name Nguyen Thi Ly said she would never forget Tra’s story My Son’s Eyes Are Mine, which was about a mother who loved her son so much that she donated her eyes to him because his sight had been bad since childhood. But after he grew up, the son refused to recognise his mother because she was blind. After his mother died, the son read her letter, which she left behind and came to know the truth. He deeply regretted his filial impiety but by then it was too late.
Good reputation spreads, and Tra’s classes are becoming more and more crowded, sometimes having up to 30 students.
After opening for several months, Tra said he saw street children looking at the class with eager eyes.
“I called them and asked them details about their lives. I was very sad on hearing that the children worked to earn a living without an opportunity to go to school. I invited them to join the class and presented them with books,” Tra said.
Hoang Van Lai, a street child from the midland province of Phu Tho, said that thanks to Tra’s wholehearted effort, he now knew how to read and write very quickly.
“I am very happy because I can read letters from my parents and the newspapers as well,” Lai said.
Nguyen Thu Lan, whose father died when she was very young and whose mother is a waste collector, often comes to class without eating anything. Tra buys her bread and sticky rice apart from notebooks and text books.
Another student is Luong Van Sinh, whose father is a drug addict and whose mother died of disease.
At the age of 10, Sinh had to give up school and went to live with his grandmother. Tra came to the grandmother’s house to encourage Sinh to return and study while asking his friends to help Sinh continue his studies at school.
Now Sinh has finished secondary level and plans to join a vocational school.
Bui Van Quyet, an official from Phuong Liet Ward said that thanks to Tra’s efforts, students in the ward have made more progress compared with earlier.
Parents are happy because their children have no time to play on the streets or be affected by social evils, Quyet said.
Three foreign languages
After finishing high-school graduation, Tra continued to teach a few students while he studied to pass the university examinations to enrol at Ha Noi Teacher’s College No.1.
After graduation from the college in 1957, he taught physics at the Nguyen Trai Secondary School where his fellow teachers and students never forgot him. He was a very well-known teacher who knew three foreign languages – English, French and Russian.
He revealed how he learned one foreign language well. In 1947, during the anti-French War, his family evacuated to the northern province of Thai Binh. At that time, books on foreign languages were very rare, and the whole class had only one or two dictionaries.
Tra wanted to have one for his own, but it was not sold anywhere. He thought of a solution. After class, he would borrow a dictionary from his classmate and copy it in his notebook.
“In three months, I had written down all the words from the French-Vietnamese dictionary,” he recalled.
Assistance from family
Since the Communal House was busy, Tra’s class had to move to his house with the support of his wife and children.
In addition, they still donate money to maintain the class. Tra’s paternal and maternal grandchildren, who are university students, are often excited to help Tra in his teaching.
To encourage his students to study hard, he organises a trip twice a year to Van Mieu (Temple of Literature), the Mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh, the Ha Noi Zoo or the Botanical Gardens.
“My students are very happy to discover these locations where they can learn a lot,” he said.
His efforts paid off when last year President Truong Tan Sang sent a letter to Tra praising his contribution to the community. VNS