Teacher who grew up left behind now cares for a new generation of rural children

Song Linlin (second row, first from right) poses with students holding up their artwork during an art class at the Gaitian campus of Qingshi Experimental Primary School in Qichun county, central China's Hubei Province. (Photo/Li Feng)

In the Dabie Mountains of Qichun county, central China's Hubei Province, Song Linlin, a 39-year-old teacher, watches her students run across the playground at the Gaitian campus of Qingshi Experimental Primary School. Most of the school's 300-plus students come from eight surrounding villages, and most are left behind children of migrant workers.

Over the years, Song has taught nearly every subject: Chinese, math, English, science, music, art and mental health. Outside the classroom, she combs students' hair, mends their clothes, and teaches them to make their beds and wash their shoes, earning the nickname "mom" among her students.

Song knows this life firsthand. She was raised by her grandparents in a village in Xiangqiao township, also in Qichun county, while her parents worked far from home. Every year she waited at the village entrance for them to come home for Chinese New Year, and every year she cried when their bus pulled away.

After graduating from Huanggang Normal University in 2011, Song became a teacher at Tanlin Middle School, teaching English and art.

She often hiked for hours to visit students' homes. One was a girl identified by the pseudonym Xiaoxia, caring for a sick father, younger siblings and an elderly grandmother. Song gave her money out of her own salary and rode four hours by bike to buy her study materials. Xiaoxia's English scores climbed from the 40s to the 90s, and she went on to graduate from college and become a nurse in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province.

Song Linlin teaches an English class at Chen'ao Primary School in Qingshi town, Qichun county, central China's Hubei Province. (Photo/Li Feng)

In 2012, Song moved to Chen'ao Primary School in Qingshi town. Teachers there were stretched thin, and boarding students often ended up doing their homework in her dorm room at night. She earned a master's degree in education while continuing to teach, and in 2020 became head teacher at the newly opened Gaitian campus.

Concerned about students' mental health, Song became a certified counselor in 2022 and set up a counseling space in her office, its walls covered in children's drawings.

In late 2020, Song was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Her students pooled their pocket money to help pay for treatment and wrote her letters urging her to rest and take her medicine.

Song's condition is now relatively stable. "Every day I have now is a bonus. I have to race against time to do a little more for the children," she said.

Song Linlin celebrates a group birthday party with students on the playground at the Gaitian campus of Qingshi Experimental Primary School in Qichun county, central China's Hubei Province. (Photo/Hong Ke)

Over the past two summers, she has taken six students on study tours to Wuhan. They rode the subway, visited museums, saw the Yangtze River Bridge — all of it for the first time. The look on their faces told Song everything she needed to know.

Since 2019, Song has kept a journal of her work, more than 2,700 entries and counting. In one of them she wrote: "Looking back, this is the most moving chapter of my life."