(Cai Mingjing teaches in her class. Photo via ThePaper)

Cai Mingjing and Xiao Xiaojie, two girls born in the 1990s, stood out among the 101 recipients of this year’s Rural Teacher Award, an award set up by Chinese businessman Jack Ma to encourage and support rural education.

The two young girls took part in the award ceremony in Sanya, a city in the southern province of Hainan, and received a cash prize of 100,000 yuan, which will be paid out over a period of three years.

Cai, a city girl, teaches at a remote village school in a mountainous area of central China’s Hubei province. The school has only 46 students and 6 teachers. Some of the students are disabled, and some of the parents are either divorced, ill, or gone. 

“It doesn’t feel like a school, because there’s not very many children and the students here are so sensible and thoughtful that you can feel their distress and helplessness,” Cai said.

Although the living condition is unbearable, she still insists to stay. 

“Under this newly-developed modern society, everything is shifting. Rural teachers shouldn’t limit themselves to just keeping company and offering support. We should learn more, share more, find more, and influence more,” Cai added. 

Cai has loaned 100,000 yuan to the school and commands numerous online resources for other teachers and students and also teaches them how to teach and study online.

(Xiao Xiaojie teaches in her class. Photo via ThePaper)

Xiao, another post-90s girl, used to have a stable job in Chengdu, a major city in southwest China’s Sichuan province. Her life focus switched to rural education during a trip to the mountainous areas of the province.

Her living condition changed after she pursued a career in rural education, as she had to deal with rats running around in her accommodation at night.

Like Cai, Xiao never stopped exploring new methods, such as using mind-mapping, which she used to broaden children’s horizon and to teach English, a skill which is often undervalued in rural areas. “We should treat our students as flower buds. Maybe some of them will blossom later, but eventually they will all bloom,” Xiao said.

As support is an important way to improve educational conditions in rural and poverty-stricken areas, Jack Ma set up the rural teacher initiative in September 2015, aiming to find excellent rural teachers and to enhance public appreciation for village teachers, so as to encourage more people to attach importance to rural education.