Intrepid teacher refuses to be silenced
Le Thi Thu Xuong runs a free weekend school for the deaf in Dis
trict 4, HCM City. She started her education career in a kindergarten but she
hasn’t always been able to say that teaching was easy.
Twenty years ago, Xuong was a normal kindergarten teacher at a
temple in the district. The temple was being used as a centre for kids because
there wasn’t any land available for a proper kindergartens in the district at
that time.
Her happy life as a kindergarten teacher was cut short at the
age of 33 when she was struck down by an illness that robbed her of the ability
to speak.
She couldn’t believe what had happened to her.
Xuong says, unable to teach, she had stayed at home crying all
the time and gradually isolated herself from everybody, including her parents.
For a year she just stayed in her room and lost interest in her friendships and
her career.
She thought it was a terrible year. She cried so much that her
hair turned white and she began to worry about her future."
But she did not want to live a life of misery or be a burden to
her parents and relatives, who were already suffering from the death of her
sister, so she decided to find a job.
"Only I could help myself. I had to stand up and face what was
in front of me," she now recalled. From then on, she became calmer and more
optimistic. She started finding jobs.
She worked many jobs including polishing lacquer paintings and
assisting a jam seller in Ben Thanh Market.
In 1992, a former kid from the kindergarten introduced her to
work as an office cleaner for Singapore Airlines. Eight years later, she met an
American man at the office by chance and helped him by asking her pupil to
accompany him to the airport terminal. On that day the former student told the
American about how Xuong had lost her speech. After hearing the story, the
American man promised to give her a machine to help her speak.
Four weeks later, she received the machine and could finally
speak again and be heard.
In 2001, she followed her sister’s suggestion to go to the club
for the deaf in Binh Thanh District to learn sign language.
But the club’s manager, a deaf woman herself fluent in sign
language, explained to her that the club did not teach sign language – only
writing and reading for hearing-impaired people – so she suggested that Xuong
should go to the Thuan An hearing-impaired education centre in Binh Duong
Province to learn sign language.
She could not afford to study sign language at the centre and
begged the club manager to let her learn at Binh Thanh District. Finally, the
manager agreed for Xuong to attend the club and learn sign language by observing
classes.
Three evenings a week, Xuong went to the club. At first she
didn’t understand anything and didn’t even know enough sign language to ask for
help.
But this did not make her lose patience. She continued coming to
the club to observe the classes. When the class teacher got sick, the club
manager asked Xuong to oversee the class room and write the lessons on the
board. The manager would then come in and explain what she had written in sign
language.
Xuong watched and learned while the club’s manager signed to the
class what Xuong had written on the board. This was how she learnt sign language
and became skilled in teaching deaf students.
In 2003 the club’s manager moved permanently to America and
closed the club, but Xuong used her initiative and opened her own club at Ly
Nhon Primary School, which is open every Sunday. She plans to open it two extra
evenings a week if the school agrees.
She is happy to be back teaching again saying that it was "the
second big surprise of her life".
It is the love of her students that she really likes.
There are about 50-60 hearing-impaired people in the club aged
from 17-65, most of them are illiterate. It’s free and before they came to the
club many of them thought they were disabled and would have to depend on their
parents for the rest of their lives. But Xuong, who still also works as a
cleaner, has changed a lot of that by teaching them writing and reading and life
skills. Xuong always advises that they have to try their best to learn and find
jobs for a better and more independent future.
Many of her students have found jobs sewing and cleaning in
offices thanks to Xuong’s friends and former students.
For the hearing-impaired students, the club is also a place to
meet and network.
"Teaching and talking as well as helping the hearing-impaired
are my greatest joys. Nothing can compare with it," she says, adding that she
hopes the club will continue for as long as possible.
Not satisfied to just teach her deaf students, Xuong is always
willing to teach sign language to any one who wants to learn to help break down
communication barriers. — VNS