(Clearwisdom.net)
I am a middle school teacher. When I began my practice of Falun Gong, I became more careful and responsible in my work and was given many awards by the education system.
After July 20, 1999, the school was filled with the evil's lies. One after another, student's pure hearts were deceived. I tried to make use of all favorable conditions to clarify the truth to students.
After the so-called "Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation Incident" occurred, the authorities tried to force students in my class to participate in the so-called "tens of thousands of signatures" event [a propaganda tactic which used threats and coercion to make students in schools sign their names on banners that defamed Falun Gong]. The students in my class who had learned the truth earlier were disgusted with such activity. Most students refused to sign and they lined up and left the table with their heads held high. This got the attention of all teachers and students in the school.
After this year's students graduated, I began to teach the next class of students. I continued to clarify the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong to my students, which was welcomed by them. At the end of that year, my home was ransacked for the fourth time. On the second day, I walked into the classroom and told my students about what happened. I told them, "I will never ask for leave because of personal reasons. If I do not come to class on any day, it means that I was kidnapped illegally by the authorities." The students felt very indignant and said, "Then our whole class will go to the police station to ask them to release you!" One student's parents also asked their child to tell me to be careful.
In the second half of last year, I started to teach a second class. Soon after, the authorities coerced the students to watch a movie that defamed Falun Gong. Some students wrote some bad words in their reports after watching the movie, so I decided to use this opportunity to tell them the facts about the persecution of Falun Gong.
I started explaining the facts in detail from the perspective of each of them being forced to pay to watch the movie. I also told them about the truth of the so called "Tiananmen Self-Immolation Incident," the totally different attitudes people had towards Dafa outside of China, and also my mother's experience of being arrested and illegally placed in a mental hospital where she was injected twice daily with an unknown drug. My students listened so attentively that they were afraid of missing even one sentence. In the end, I told them, "I know what these words of mine today mean to me, but I don't care. What's important is that you can understand the truth and become upright people." Right after I finished talking, the whole class erupted with thunder-like applause. Afterwards, many students wrote down their thoughts in their journals. One student said, "I used to hate Falun Gong... I'm not sure why but after I listened to you I immediately stand on the side of Falun Gong." Some students said, "We are afraid that we may lose a teacher as good as you."
My supervisor heard that I clarified the truth about Falun Gong in the class and he criticized me during a meeting. Due to the pressure from the higher authorities, the school no longer allowed me to teach. That evening, my home telephone kept ringing, and many students' parents told me over the phone that they didn't know what had happened and that their children had burst into tears when they returned home. One student called me and told me that when the principal made the decision to suspend my job, the whole class cried, and that all the students were afraid and didn't know if I would be arrested. At 9 p.m. that evening, three students who had been sitting in cold wind for three hours called me. One of the students said, "Teacher, you have to uphold your own principles. We all support you!"
On the second day, the new teacher who took my class went to find the school supervisor after the class and said she could not teach. As soon as she entered the class, students started to cry and when she called them to stand up, none of them stood up. When she asked questions, students were in tears. The whole class also voluntarily wrote a letter to the school supervisor and strongly asked to let me come back to teach.
Many of my students' parents also went to the school, education bureau, and district government to ask for an explanation, and requested them to allow me to come back to teach. They said, "As long as this teacher has noble character, treats students well, and teaches well, we will support her even if she is an enemy." The school's principal said that as long as I write a "pledge" to give up practicing Falun Gong, I could come back to the school to teach. I resolutely refused and for this my job was suspended for over a week.
One day, while I was resting at home, nearly 30 students suddenly came to visit me. They should have been at school for make-up class. But in order to protest, they refused to attend the class and came to visit me!
I warned them that they should not hold up their studies and cause their parents to worry about them. They all said that their parents approved. One student said, "Teacher, my Grandfather told me to ask you if you still remember that one poem written by Yu Qian." I said, "Is that the poem that says, 'I am not afraid even of being destroyed. I only want to leave the human world innocent"? She smiled and nodded.
Several days later, the heads of our district's "610 Office" and education bureau came to talk to me. Because I kept sending forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil in other dimensions, I finally walked through this test and came back to the classroom again.
Afterwards, I heard that our principal had said in his office that my students' parents going to talk to them about my issue was the largest case of parents making a group appeal since the opening of our school.
Written on May 31, 2003
