The year 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of Yu Na’s first year of teaching at Hengyang Radio and TV University (RTVU). Over that decade, her many students have established themselves in a variety of careers, and she has become a representative “dual qualification” teacher who can teach both theory and skills.
For her teaching management she has won nearly 20 provincial and municipal honours.
What has remained unchanged is her love of her students, and her enthusiasm for and commitment to education.
Positive energy in her relations with students
“To cope with changing times, we should stick to fundamentals, learning calmly and developing solid skills.” Yu Na often says this in class, feeling a heavy responsibility toward the young faces before her.“They were born in the internet age, and information technology gives them almost unlimited possibilities, but also makes it easy for them to become disoriented.” Yu Na says her main concern is what kind of “core competence” to give her students.
In her Marketing class, she focuses on three key ideas: devotion to family and nation, ethics, and professional skills. In the case studies she shares, patriotic entrepreneurs are at the forefront. These include Ren Zhengfei, a warm-hearted warrior, more than 70 years old, and the founder of Huawei; Dong Mingzhu, who has established the brand Green all over the world; and numerous local entrepreneurs from Hunan, who through their enterprises promote the Hunan spirit of “being a forerunner in any field”.
Yu Na puts a great deal of effort into her teaching plans, with a focus on keeping students interested by way of case studies, situational teaching, and role play.
Outside of class, she is like an older sister to them, always ready to help. The tacit understanding she has with her students has made her classes very popular. In 2019, she came first in a competition of courses in ideology and politics in Hengyang City, and in 2020 first in a vocational-school teaching competition in Hengyang.
Always the leader
Over her decade of teaching, Yu Na has always kept in mind that“great learning makes a teacher, and moral integrity makes a model. A teacher should be an example that students are proud of.” The outbreak of Covid-19 earlier this year was a considerable disruption to schooling. Yu Na stayed home in isolation, but her thoughts were always with her students. She kept busy designing teaching content, updating resources, and optimizing plans.
Online and face-to-face teaching are completely different, and Yu Na has prepared numerous materials to enhance the former while also learning a great deal online from “celebrity” teachers. "Being separated from students as we are now makes the strength of the content all the more important.” Ms. Yu has taught two courses online during the epidemic: Marketing and Management Arts and Methods. For each class she prepared ten times the material she ended up using, including graphics, texts and quite a few videos.
“Every day, I look forward to seeing Ms. Yu online. She calms me down,” one student testified. In addition to ensuring that her students continued to be educated, Yu Na has been paying attention to their psychological states, encouraging them to face difficulties, keep themselves safe, and find time to study.
Onward and upward!
Hengyang RTVU is an online university that offers quality services to learners with all kinds of needs.
Yu Na is fully aware that enthusiasm alone is not up to the task of educating students and developing them as people. In her view, she herself is above all a learner.
In 2014, she obtained certification to teach Marketing and Tourism Management at the university level; in 2017, she obtained a master's degree from the University of South China, and became a Mandarin tester in Hunan Province; and later, she received intermediate tea-artist certification. She became an internal auditor for the national quality-management system, and is the holder of five patents. When asked why she has gained so many skills, she smiles and says that teachers need to keep themselves up to par with the changing needs of society.
In recent years, Yu Na has led the studies “Building and Innovation of Community-education Learning Environments Based on the Concept of U-Learning” and “Urban and Rural Care of Older Adults in Hengyang: Education from the Perspective of Community Work”for the Educational Science Planning project of Hunan Province and the Social Science Foundation project of Hengyang City respectively. She has also led 2 projects for Hunan RTVU, and participated in nearly 10 research projects. In 2019, Yu Na was named an “Excellent Worker of Vocational Education and Scientific Research” by Hengyang City.
Reprinted by the OUC News Network from people.cn Written by Yuan Ye