Falun Dafa Minghui.org www.minghui.org PRINT

Applying Truth, Compassion, Forbearance in My Work as a Schoolteacher

July 11, 2008

(Clearwisdom.net) I have been a high school Chinese teacher for more than 20 years. I am also the teacher in charge of my class. I teach in a very famous school in our city. Many students attend the school. The workload for each teacher is also very heavy. Due to the influence of the material world, schools are no longer clean places. Teachers often use weekends to tutor students and accept gifts and money from parents. Therefore, they do not put in the effort when they teach during the week days and concentrate on off-class teaching. Teachers in charge also abuse this power. They form good relationships with parents. The teachers receive help from parents, and, in return, arrange good seats for their children and give special treatment to these students. Students and teachers have formed a relationship based on money. Schools have now been contaminated with money.

I am in my early 30s. I was also contaminated by this environment. On weekends, I organized students to come to my home for tutoring. I directly asked them for money. On holidays, some of the parents visited me and gave me gifts, which included things such as brand name clothing and brand name cigarettes and liquor. Some parents even gave me money directly. The amount ranged from two hundred to ten thousand yuan. If some parents did not give me much, I would complain and give them a hard time. Due to the lure of money, my relationship with my students lost its purity.

In March 1999, I was fortunate to learn Falun Dafa. The universal principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" awakened me and allowed me to find my true self. I used the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance to judge what I should and not do. I no longer used my weekends and holiday times to earn money. Instead, I put more effort into my daily teaching and into improving the quality of my teaching. I no longer gave my students and their parents a hard time. I arranged the students' seats according to their heights. I refused to accept gifts and cash from parents. I also kindly refused any dinner invitation from the parents.

Once a parent gave each teacher in our office 200 yuan worth of gift vouchers. Teacher Liu accepted the vouchers, but I refused to take them. Teacher Liu and Teacher Wang fussed at me for not accepting the vouchers. I said, "Falun Dafa teaches me to follow the principles of 'Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance.' If I accept the gift vouchers, then I do not deserve to be a Falun Dafa practitioner." Seeing that I was very determined, they took the vouchers themselves and did not ask me anymore about it.

There was another incident. A parent hid some food stamps for eggs and peanut oil in my office drawer while I was in class. I found out and returned the food stamps to the parent. The parent and her colleague did not understand me. They said, "Isn't this what everyone else in society does today?" I said, "Falun Gong teaches us to upgrade our morality and not to drift with the current of the society." The parent and her colleague really appreciated the teaching of Falun Gong.

I have a student who had some trouble writing essays. His father asked me to tutor his son. I used some of my spare time after class to help the student to analyze his essays and edited several of his

essays. His rapid improvement made his father, Mr Zhang, very happy, and he insisted on paying me one thousand yuan. I told him that Falun Gong teaches people to become better people. Helping students is my responsibility and so I could not accept the money. After his father heard me say this, he left the money quickly and drove off. Later, I heard that this student did not have any extra reading materials, so I used the one thousand yuan to buy some books for the student. I did not tell him that his dad had given me money for the tutoring and said to him that his father gave me the money to buy some books for his son.

In October 1999, I was arrested by the Chinese Communist Party for practicing Falun Gong. Mr. Zhang and his family heard the news and told all their acquaintances my story. They also urged the other parents to help rescue me.

Before I practiced Falun Gong, whenever students made mistakes, I would often beat them or threaten them to get them to listen to me. My relationship with my students was very tense. Some students only listened to me on the surface, but they cursed me and hated me behind my back. After I practiced Falun Gong, I changed my former way of doing things. I used a kind heart to treat students and care for them. I tried to help them gradually improve. This approach has yielded very good results. My teaching was evaluated as tops in our school, and I formed very good relationships with my students.

My students and their parents spread good words about me, including about my refusal to accept gifts and my good teaching abilities, as well as my determination to practice Falun Gong. Many people in my city know that there is a good teacher who is a Falun Gong practitioner, but he is persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for believing in Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance.

After being detained, persecuted, and tortured in forced labor camps several times, I finally returned to school. My students did not believe in the CCP media's slander of Falun Gong. They greeted me with warm applause. Right now, I am using my words and actions, as well as the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" to purify the school. I want to use the universal principle of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" to awaken every being and restore a pure environment to the school.