Teacher Duong Thi Ben always tries her best every day to "keep the fire" of Tay language for students in the highlands.

Born and raised in Ga village, Van Son commune - one of the particularly difficult communes of Son Dong district with nearly 100% ethnic minorities living, from a young age, Ben had the dream of becoming a teacher to contribute to building her homeland. In particular, the cultural identity of the Tay people has nurtured in her a sense of pride in her roots. For her, every song, every song, every story of the Tay people contains life experiences, knowledge about labor, health care, and concepts about love for people, homeland, and country.

With her efforts, Ben was admitted to Son Dong District Boarding School for Ethnic Minorities and in 2001, she was admitted to Ngo Gia Tu Pedagogical College, Bac Giang. After graduating, she taught at An Lac Secondary School (Son Dong). In 2011, Ms. Ben transferred to Van Son Secondary School. Both schools where she taught had a large population of Tay ethnic people.

“Although most of the students are Tay, when I started teaching, I realized that most of the students did not use Tay in communication. Therefore, in addition to teaching, I really want to teach them Tay so that they can converse and preserve their ethnic language,” Ms. Ben confided.

From that concern, she wrote down the words she knew, expanding her vocabulary through communication with relatives. At first, the teacher taught the children in her family and village how to read, write, and communicate normally. Teacher Ben's free Tay language class has more and more students, including young people. That's why, while in the past, very few Tay people could speak their own language, now many young people in Van Son commune and neighboring communes can read and speak Tay fluently and use it in daily communication.

“To be honest, even though I am Tay, I and many of my friends can hardly speak Tay anymore. Since Ms. Ben has been tutoring us, we can speak our own language more. My grandparents and parents are also very excited,” Duong Thi An, a resident of Ga village, excitedly shared.

In particular, during her teaching in class, she realized that most students did not know the Tay language, so she had the idea of ​​establishing a Tay language class to help students communicate, learn the Tay language, and preserve the language and writing.

Accordingly, she met with prestigious people, the Head of the Then Singing Club for advice, as well as learned more documents online, books, newspapers... to improve and add knowledge and information about the Tay language. In 2022, Ms. Ben asked the school for permission to establish a Tay ethnic language learning club, with 15 initial students.

By the 2023-2024 school year, Van Son Secondary School will introduce the Tay language into local educational activities. Teacher Pham Van Sy, Principal of the school, said that the school recently established a Tay language preservation and development club with 30 staff, teachers, and students participating, meeting once a week on Saturday afternoons. Teacher Ben was assigned to teach the Tay language to the club members.

In addition to printed documents, Ms. Ben has worked hard to compile electronic lectures with illustrated images and videos to improve the effectiveness of teaching Tay language.

To expand her knowledge, Ms. Ben traveled to all the villages and hamlets where Tay people live in Son Dong district to collect and compile documents. After a long period of research, she compiled a textbook for teaching Tay language from basic to advanced, including in-depth knowledge about the culture, customs, and rituals of the Tay people.

This is a valuable resource not only for students to study, but also to support researchers in studying the culture and language of the Tay people. In addition to printed documents, she has worked hard to compile electronic lectures with illustrative images and videos to improve teaching effectiveness.

After many years of teaching the Tay language, the teacher has had a number of topics and initiatives applied to teaching practice such as: "Researching, introducing, and compiling Tay language learning materials to apply to teaching local education programs for students of Van Son Secondary School"; "Researching and preserving folk songs of the Tay ethnic group in Son Dong"; "Some indigenous cultural features of the Tay people in Van Son commune".

In recent school years, some ethnic boarding schools in the province have also invited Ms. Ben to teach extracurricular activities on preserving ethnic minority cultural identity for students. In 2024, she was selected by the Provincial Ethnic Committee (now the Department of Ethnic and Religious Affairs) to be a member of the Tay ethnic language translation council of Bac Giang province to serve the research, preservation and development of ethnic minority culture in the province.

With her efforts and contributions, in 2023 and 2024, teacher Duong Thi Ben was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee and the Chairman of the Provincial Fatherland Front Committee for her outstanding achievements in emulation movements contributing to the socio-economic development of ethnic minority and mountainous areas of Bac Giang province.

Source: https://baodantoc.vn/truyen-niem-dam-me-tieng-tay-cho-hoc-sinh-vung-cao-1743394077363.htm