Special thanks to special teachers

With the annual Teacher's Day falling on Monday, people across the nation are expressing respect and gratitude to teachers, especially those who have made a special contribution.

DANCING IN THE SILENCE

In Taiyuan, capital city of Shanxi Province, there is a special dancing team that is made up of deaf children. Although none of the members can hear the music, the team has won many prizes with their exquisite dancing skills.

Thirty-five-year-old Zhao Jing has spent 13 years leading the dance team of the Taiyuan School for the Deaf.

After graduating from collage in 1999, Zhao was assigned to work in the deaf school. At the beginning, she often felt frustrated when trying to teach the children how to dance.

"I can hardly communicate with them. They cannot hear voices and there seemed no way to make them feel the dances," she said.

However, Zhao decided to make a difference no matter how hard it would be. She learnt sign language and helped the children "listen" to the music by describing the meaning and connotation in the music with her hands.

When rehearsing the dances, Zhao would stamp her feet to the music and draw the sound wave on the blackboard so as to let the children get a sense of the rhythm. She also made facial expressions to introduce the emotions expressed by the music to the children.

Zhao said, usually, the deaf children have to spend more than a month to master a dance that can be learnt by the healthy children within several days.

Thanks to the effort made by Zhao and the children, the team has won several national prizes during the past a few years.

"The children treat me as their mother. This special job requires one to sacrifice selflessly with patience and love," Zhao said, adding that her dream is to bring the children to a larger stage and encourage them to show the beauty of their soul to more people.

PAINTING RAINBOWS

In the children welfare center of Liuzhou City in Guangxi Province, there is a "rainbow class." The students in the class are mentally ill children aged from 7 to 12.

Walking into the classroom, the reporter saw the children learning to apply colors to the patterns on the paper under the guidance of their teacher - 43-year-old Su Shuping.

"We should paint the apple red and the pear yellow," said Su. However, many children cannot paint correctly.

Su said that painting can be extremely hard for many mentally ill children. "Teaching them to hold a pencil can also be hard. Usually, after several months' teaching, only two out of 12 children can hold a pencil correctly."

Su admitted that the monotonous and repetitive work sometimes gets on her nerve, but her sense of responsibility has made her stay with the children for more than 20 years.

There are 306 children living in the welfare center. Beside working with the mentally ill children in the daytime, Su also helps capable children with their homework at night.

"I get along well with children and I am emotionally attached to them," Su said, "I will be very delighted if the children can make any improvement or get adopted."