I didn’t get excited when I was admitted to East China Normal University as an undergraduate student, though it is considered the second most prestigious school in teacher’s education following Beijing Normal University, and it’s located in Shanghai, one of the most developed cities in China.

My parents, uncle and aunts, and even my great-grandfather had all been teachers, and I believed there was a kind of gene running through our family. However, most of them changed their career sometime or other and achieved successes in different ways, so it didn’t excite me much to think that I would be a teacher, too.

However, in August 2011, I chose to say goodbye to my test planner job at Michelin Tires Group and took a plane to Korla, a city lying in the middle of Xinjiang, to become a senior high school English teacher, thinking that it might be a chance to challenge myself and start a new life.

The school was affiliated with PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Company, a state-owned enterprise and a major supplier in oil and natural gas. Therefore, most of the students came from families where one or both of the parents worked in the company.

The students enjoy good conditions since oil wages are relatively higher than those of locals doing other jobs. However, those families also have to make sacrifices: most of the parents had to stay in frontiers where the oilfields lie, in the Gobi Desert far away from the cities, for months at a time.

Therefore, it is common for some of the students growing up lacking the company of one or even both of their parents, causing some problems in their behavior and learning.

I still remember my first class, where most of the students came from an oil base in the southwestern part of the Tarim Basin, 1,000 kilometers away from Korla. They spent their first 14 or 15 years in the base, and it was their first time studying in a brand new environment far away from home.

I had prepared a long presentation, but when I was in the middle of it, a boy cut in, “Teacher, we can’t understand you; our English is poor.” Feeling awkward, I stammered the rest of my speech in a hurry.

Their first test scores also stunned me: for a 150 point test paper in senior one, their average score was only 33, with an accuracy rate of less than 30 percent.

The textbooks became meaningless, for they were far beyond their capacity. The classroom turned into a place that I wanted to escape; I had to spend half my time maintaining class discipline and usually walked out of the classroom soaked in sweat, for I had to raise my voice all the time, or it would be drowned out by the racket.

Other teachers felt the same desperation, and some even planned to quit after the first term.

Before I became a teacher, I was fascinated by the mighty ones created by TV and movies: GTO—Great Teacher Onitsuka (1998, Japan) features an unconventional teacher who conquers his wild students through street smarts; Les Choristes (2004, France) is about a teacher who goes to a village school to help a group of students by teaching chorus; The Ron Clark Story (2006, America), is said to be based on a true story, where a passionate teacher ignites not only the alcohol burner in his chemistry class but also the students’ passion for learning.

They all seemed great magicians turning dust to gold and had been my great inspirations. However, I started to doubt their truthfulness and wondered if they were merely myths created to satisfy our imagination.

The situation in my classroom was getting worse, and I knew it’s time for me to make a choice: to leave or to make some changes.

I chose the latter.

I started to learn from experienced teachers, learning classroom management skills; I spent hours preparing for every single class, trying to make it more accessible for my students; and I began to read books on adolescent psychology, trying to understand their behaviors better.

After a term’s effort, the students started to change, making progress in their studies and behavior. Thanks to their excellent performance, I succeeded in a public class and received acknowledgment from my counterparts.

Most importantly, I started to bond with the students on an emotional level, and some kids began to confide their secrets and dreams with me: some were from broken families and grew up with their grandparents; some were worried about their academic performance but still wished to be athletes or artists in the future; some were planning to carry on as their parents had and stay in their hometown, while some wanted to see the world.

All in all, they had shown great resilience and knew precisely what they wanted to do in the future. Compared with some of the adults, they showed more optimism and self-assurance. I felt refreshed and uplifted every time I saw them.

I bumped along the first year of my teaching career but made it through. In the second year, the school became a key school under the direct management of the local educational bureau. The school started to enroll students from other junior schools, and the academic performance of the students improved.

However, I still miss my starting point as a teacher, which served as a lesson for me to understand the complexity of education. I thought it was the most straightforward job in the world, and I was wrong. A teacher doesn’t just give lessons and grade exams and papers, but serves as a cheerleader, a crowd-control expert, a psychologist and a motivational speaker, among other things. 

“Perfect” students may make our teaching life easier. But most of the time, we have to come up with creative ways to connect with students from different backgrounds. They may not be as perfect as we expect them to be, but it is a teacher’s responsibility to help them remove the barriers, unleash their potential, and make their dreams come true.

The author Yang Xina is a teacher at the Bazhou Second Middle School in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.