A crisp bang echoed through the duty room of the dormitory building at Tiantang Middle School. The dormitory director, Hong Cheng, shouted down the corridor: "
Are you trying to get yourselves killed?! It's the middle of the night
, why aren't you asleep?" Hearing this shout, the boarding students in the dormitories on both sides of the corridor, instead of falling asleep, became noisy… Hou Zheng had been busy for several days welcoming the new first-year high school students. Today, the principal told him that the boarding students weren't sleeping at night, causing a ruckus for half the night, and asked him to handle it.
Dormitory director Hong Cheng was a veteran cadre, originally a physical education teacher. Over fifty years old, he had spent his entire life being managed by others. This time, the city was reorganizing its directly affiliated schools, sending a new principal and merging a junior high school, renaming it Tiantang Middle School. The new principal, Jia, was Hong Cheng's classmate in the physical education class at the teachers' college, and Teacher Hong used this connection to secure a mid-level cadre position. He claimed to be the oldest new cadre. Little did he know that the job of dormitory director wouldn't be easy. The newly recruited high school students weren't as easily intimidated as the junior high students of the past. This had been giving him a headache for days. Especially the new first-year high school students; they were very excited to be together. They wouldn't fall asleep until bedtime. The day before yesterday, Principal Jia had already tried to talk things out in the dorms. After all, he was the principal, and the students could even distinguish between "kings" and "kings." When the principal came, they all quieted down. But as soon as the principal left, the students started causing trouble again. So he had to complain to his old classmates again.
Principal Jia couldn't do the work for him again, so he assigned Hou Zheng to handle the matter.
At the beginning of the year, because the city approved the resumption of high school enrollment at Tiantang Middle School, Principal Jia, after investigation, reassigned Hou Zheng, who had already been in and out of the student affairs office four times, to the student affairs office as a staff member. At the same time, he also assigned Shi Dong, the former head of the physical education group, to the student affairs office as deputy director, in charge of daily operations. When Principal Jia came to Tiantang Middle School, he brought a "his own person" from his previous unit, Bai Ming, a former physical education teacher, and appointed him as the director of the principal's office. This Shi Dong was once Bai Ming's student, and now he was trying to use his connections to get a position. Since Shi Dong had always worked in physical education, the student affairs office was the most suitable department for him among all the school's departments. This was because the student affairs office required dealing with homeroom teachers, and Shi Dong, along with two other staff members, were all former physical education teachers. They had never been homeroom teachers, nor had they ever stood on a platform or held chalk. Therefore, Bai Ming urged Principal Jia to transfer Hou Zheng, a homeroom teacher with over twenty years of experience known for his ability to manage unruly classes, to the student affairs office to give Shi Dong a head start. Principal Jia, also worried about the difficulty of managing newly recruited high school students, agreed. Without Hou Zheng's consent, he was forcibly assigned to the student affairs office, in charge of school discipline and hygiene. Hou Zheng understood the leader's intentions but didn't bother to argue about the consequences.
Principal Jia had always served as a deputy in key schools and had even presided over a public-private partnership school during a special period. This new principal liked appearances and loved to make a show of things. Teachers waiting for class had to hold their lesson plans in their left hand and their trouser creases in their right, all standing in a designated position facing the same direction. Teachers jokingly referred to the waiting-for-class style as "facing east with buttocks facing west." However, back then, he was dealing with top students selected from across the city. He was completely unprepared for the state of these students who had been left over from other schools in the city and came to Tiantang Middle School. Although he had heard about Hou Zheng's abilities before taking office, being a new principal and quite self-assured, he believed management was his forte, and that breaking Hou Zheng's myth at this ordinary middle school would improve his image in the eyes of his new subordinates.
To refute Hou Zheng's views, Principal Jia arranged for several vice-principals and directors to each observe one lesson of Hou Zheng's most difficult-to-manage class every day, ensuring that there was leadership in every class. Initially, it had some effect. But before Principal Jia's smile faded, the students became restless. Even when the principal himself was in the classroom, the class couldn't function normally. These leaders, long accustomed to their official careers, didn't understand that educational methods must consider not only the children's psychological needs but also their physical endurance. For these children, who were used to being undisciplined, getting them to sit still and attend class in a short period of time required special measures. Even with the principal personally teaching every class, it was difficult to keep the students disciplined. Any discipline was meaningless to them if it exceeded their physical limits. Seeing the class getting increasingly chaotic, Principal Jia helplessly told Hou Zheng, "Do whatever you want. As long as these kids don't have any accidents before graduation, you'll have done a great service to the school." Hou Zheng understood that the conflict between him and the principal was irreconcilable. The principal had lost face in front of him.
Ring… the phone in the duty room rang, interrupting Hou Zheng's thoughts. It was a call from the dormitory director, Hong Cheng:
"Teacher Hou, these rascals are still causing trouble, they won't sleep. Come and take a look."
"Okay." Hou Zheng hung up the phone and headed towards the dormitory building.
At the dormitory entrance, Director Hong complained to Hou Zheng: "These kids have too much energy. They've been in military training for two or three days straight. They've been making a ruckus all night and still won't sleep."
Hou Zheng went to the dormitory building's broadcasting room and used the loudspeaker to issue two notices to the most disruptive new first-year high school students:
1. All new first-year high school students, open your dormitory doors. Those who can't sleep quietly, run ten laps around the track now. If you still want to chat afterward, chat all you want.
2. Those who don't want to run, close your doors and go to sleep within 30 seconds. The school will be inspecting. If any dormitory is still noisy, the students in the offending dormitory will have to do an extra hour of spinning in place under the midday sun tomorrow at noon after military training. Furthermore, during future military training, you must wait until all the students eating in the cafeteria have left before you can eat.
We are an orderly society, and everyone must take responsibility for their actions. This is a requirement of the future society, and it is what you will learn at Paradise Middle School. For those students who don't understand this principle, this is the first lesson. Character education, public order lesson. I've finished speaking. Now, I'll give you 60 seconds to prepare. Two minutes later, the school began its inspection and recording.
Hou Zheng turned off the broadcast and went downstairs. Director Hong hurriedly came over and said, "Wait a little longer and see."
Hou Zheng instructed Director Hong to arrange for the teachers on duty to prepare for the inspection. They were to visit every dormitory, discussing the inspection as they went, so that every student in each dormitory could feel the inspection coming from outside.
Back in the duty room, it was nearly midnight. Hou Zheng dressed and prepared to go home. Before leaving, he picked up the phone and dialed the dormitory duty room: "Director Hong? Are the children still making a fuss?"
"No sound, they're all dead still!"
On his way home, in the night breeze, thinking about Director Hong's reply on the phone, Hou Zheng shook his head helplessly… Classes had just started, and the order in each class was still somewhat unstable. After the administrative meeting on Monday, Director Shi returned to his office and said to Hou Zheng: "Teacher Hou, the principal said that evening self-study for boarding students hasn't been arranged yet. For the next two days, the directors of the Academic Affairs Office and the Student Affairs Office will take turns conducting orientation for the students every evening. The principal wants you to keep an eye on it."
Hou Zheng laughed and said, "I don't deserve it. It should be your director who's looking after me; how could I dare to look after the director!"
Shi Dong said, "It's for you to look after the students!"
"Then I dare not accept such an honor. Do I not trust the director, or does the principal not trust the director?"
Hearing Hou Zheng's words, Shi Dong's face flushed slightly. He remained silent for a long while. He knew that the homeroom teachers below had many complaints about him, the director in charge of student affairs. When it came to student work, not to mention this universally acknowledged senior figure in the school with exceptional professional skills, even an ordinary homeroom teacher couldn't compare to him. But vanity still made him feel embarrassed. Therefore, he said nothing.
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