Outstanding teachers talk about textbook innovation

Teaching with heart

Graduated from the Pedagogical University in 2001, Ms. Huyen has been working with the "blackboard and chalk" profession for 20 years now. She shared that since her school years, she has been passionate about observing, learning and exploring natural phenomena around her. Her passion for science , along with her deep admiration for the image of a teacher on the podium, has planted in her the dream of becoming a teacher. Despite many hardships, she always feels happy and proud because the teaching profession not only teaches words, but also instills confidence and will in students.

“In the first years after graduating, teaching conditions were limited, I was very confused, but then I learned from my colleagues and found methods to make each teaching hour more interesting and attractive to students,” she said.

Ms. Huyen is a Natural Science teacher. When the curriculum and textbooks were renewed, this subject was the most strongly renewed, integrating knowledge from Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, posing great demands and challenges for teachers.

The female teacher shared that she persistently participated in professional training courses, applied modern teaching methods related to project-based learning, STEM, creative experiences, etc., making students more excited about learning. In the past 9 school years, she trained 122 students of the school to participate in the city-level Chemistry competition, winning 88 prizes; together with her colleagues, she trained 80 students to win provincial prizes. In addition, she guided students to participate in scientific research competitions and achieved excellent results many times.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen in a teaching hour

In the age of technology, students have many opportunities to access knowledge quickly but are also easily distracted, lack concentration, and lazy thinking due to dependence on digital tools. Therefore, she believes that teachers must create motivation and arouse interest by carefully preparing lessons, making students love the subject. She builds lessons that are closely related to life so that knowledge is close, vivid and easy to remember. When students see the practical value of knowledge, they will learn with more interest, initiative and depth.

Ms. Huyen is considered a teacher with a teaching method that is tailored to each student. With the general group, she teaches patiently, closely, and breaks down goals for students to learn and progress slowly. With students with outstanding abilities, she assigns advanced tasks, guides scientific research, and participates in intellectual playgrounds. "Students are like precious stones that need to be polished with the heart, responsibility, and passion of the teacher, teaching with practice, to arouse their self-study and creativity," she shared.

With her persistent efforts and dedication to each student in teaching, the teacher has had an impressive list of achievements such as: excellent teacher at all levels, Emulation Fighter at the grassroots level, Emulation Fighter at the provincial level; the Minister of Education and Training awarded the "For the Cause of Education" Medal; in 2023, the President awarded the noble title "Excellent Teacher"... and in 2025, she was awarded the title "National Emulation Fighter", the highest individual award in the national patriotic emulation movement.

“In more than 20 years of teaching, I have overcome many difficulties, from professional challenges to my own limitations. But even in the most tiring moments, I believe that teaching is a profession that sows love and the greatest reward is seeing students progress, become confident and know how to live a useful life.” Meritorious teacher Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen

Proposal to streamline textbooks

In the 2025-2026 school year, with the policy of building a unified set of textbooks to be applied in teaching next year. Ms. Huyen believes that unifying into a set of textbooks is a necessary step to ensure consistency in content, methods and output standards.

With the Natural Science subject, after many years of teaching the integrated program, she shared: "Integration is still the right direction, in line with modern educational trends, helping students understand the relationship between the fields of Physics - Chemistry - Biology, thereby forming systematic, scientific thinking, developing students' ability to solve practical problems".

However, she realized that the integration method needs to be adjusted to be more suitable with teaching practice. Some shortcomings need to be considered when editing or unifying the upcoming textbooks. That is, the program content should be more concise, increasing practicality and application so that students can learn by doing, learn to discover. The integration needs to show more clearly the logical connection between topics and knowledge chains, avoiding mechanical coupling between three sub-subjects.

For secondary school level, it is not necessary to combine all contents into a single textbook. Integration is correct but needs a more flexible, scientific and appropriate direction for the psychological characteristics of the age. Because, at this age, students are forming a foundation of scientific thinking, they need to approach each area of knowledge clearly, coherently and at a level appropriate to their ability. Each content should maintain its own identity in terms of approach, practice method and scientific language, because that is the foundation for students to learn deeply, understand correctly and develop natural science capacity later.

In addition, textbooks should be designed with more real-life situations, small projects or STEM experiential activities. “On the other hand, there is still a need for regular, more substantial and in-depth professional development programs, especially in the coming period when textbooks are revised and unified nationwide,” Ms. Huyen said.