Remember when it was the last week of holidays before school started and you couldn’t relax because you knew what was coming?

I dreaded it in the same way we hate going to work later in life. Especially if my holidays were boring - there was nothing worse than having to confess how dull your life was when my classmates went away to somewhere exotic (like actually outside town) and did exciting stuff.

Still, I did love quite a few subjects, especially science and luckily my high school had a wonderful set of labs so we blew up stuff and cut up dead animals and zapped ourselves with electricity a lot. Silly I know but that’s what you do in school before you discover girls!

So all up, school was still cool even though I never did very well in any of my exams – then again, Einstein had a similar problem!

Although it’s only the continuation of the semester, it’s still a big event when more than 20 million students hit the books again until the middle of the year when the heat becomes just too much and the semester ends.

Despite my repeated reminders via Facebook and Hotmail, I know all too well that my students slowly come back to classes like sleepy sheep. “Oh, teacher, I didn’t know class has started again!” Yes, you did – I know because you were posting selfies for the last two weeks of you and your friends eating cake in every coffee shop north of Hoi An.

It’s a different matter for the local schools. You’ll know it’s all happening as the traffic jam you’re stuck in turns out to be the parental chaos of dropping off kids at school or high school students taking text messages in the middle of the road – don’t schools teach the difference between the sidewalk and the road? 

One thing I’ve always loved is the early spring stream of high school girls in those stunning white silk ao dai riding to school, madly chatting away, obvious to the traffic. It’s almost the national photographic emblem of the country to see them riding pass the rice fields, the contrast between the rich green of the rice against the flawless, spotless white uniforms. 

Boys, sometimes three on a bike, are a different matter as they wobble all over the roads shouting at each other and playing games, again ignoring the traffic that’s been as much a part of their landscape as the trees and sky.

For my older students it’s an incredibly stressful four-month race to study enough to pass high school and college exams before the summer holidays in June and July. It’s no surprise that many students do so poorly at English studies when they are constantly exhausted by weekly tests, exams, assignments and projects in the Vietnamese curriculum. My classes usually start with the ritual complaints about their local teachers!

Parents are stressed out too. Over February I expect to get a lot of questions from concerned parents about IELTS preparation and the inevitable questions about their children catching up with English and what they should do to help them at home.  

It’s also a time to remember the tough conditions far out in the countryside where kids have to cross rivers on small boats or even more scary – on foot. Then there are the kids of military staff studying on the islands or children studying on floating villages. 

I occasionally think of the other kids in the mountains studying in shacks with not much in the way of modern equipment, bedding (lots of kids have to stay overnight as their home is miles away) or heating/cooling facilities.

It’s not much easier for their teachers either with poor salaries and harsh working conditions. As much as locals complain about some teachers in the cities, the dedication and perseverance of teachers across the country on the whole are truly remarkable.

One group that often goes unnoticed are the students with disabilities or handicaps. However they frequently show more enthusiasm for education than their luckier peers who take it a little bit for granted.

As a teacher – it’s good to be back at work and I enjoy planning new and hopefully interesting lessons. I don’t know what the Year of the Rooster means for education in my decade-long adopted country yet I’m sure it’s going to be intriguing, boring, exciting, frustrating, fun and a long struggle.

For everyone involved in education, we think of the start of school as nothing unusual yet to me, it’s a magical time. A time when I and my students explore the life and ideas of the world we live in. As one of my heroes, 19-year-old Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head for daring to go to school in a dangerous part of Pakistan (she survived), says:

“One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world.”

Have a great time at school, everyone!