A Vietnamese headmistress has devoted the past 20 years of her life to the care and education of children with special needs against social prejudices.

Vo Thi Khoai, 68, is the principal of Gia Dinh Special Needs School at 280 Bui Huu Nghia, Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City.

The school, run by a local parish, accepts about 90 children from 18 months to 18 years of age who suffer from Down syndrome, autism or retardation and cannot fit in at other schools.

Unconditional love

Greeting Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters with an angelic smile and a soothing voice at her small but tidy office, Khoai recalled with apparent pride and joy her 20-year journey as a teacher of underprivileged children, a demanding job not so many are willing to take on.

Khoai was a middle school teacher prior to 1993, when she was transferred to Gia Dinh Special Needs School. She was promoted to the school’s headmistress two years later, a position she has held until now.

In the early 1990s, she said, conditions such as Down syndrome and autism were little discussed in the country’s medical literature, so finding materials on effective teaching methods for children with such conditions was virtually impossible.

As luck would have it, in 1996, Khoai was qualified for a scholarship to attend a training course in France on educating children with special needs, a chance she jumped at without a second thought.

After one year of training, Khoai returned home and applied what she had learned in France to her school to tremendously fruitful results.

“Kids who had refused to utter a word before demonstrated great improvements in their communication skills, while hyperactive ones became calmer and started playing musical instruments and solving jigsaws,” Khoai recalled. “They also learned to take basic care of themselves, which was a great motivation for us.”

Khoai said the two crucial rules she had learned about educating children with special needs were that they need to be able to feel your genuine love, and that they should be encouraged to socialize, not to be isolated from the society.

When teachers in her school were still reluctant to take the kids out, Khoai took it upon herself to take them out for shopping, eating and sightseeing, during which she taught them skills such as taking the escalator or crossing the street.

The headmistress would often be looked at sympathetically by others on the street, from whose eyes she could read that they were thinking, “how unfortunate this woman must be to have given birth to all these children,” Khoai said jokingly.

Khoai gave no thought to such judgments, she said, as the only thing she cared about was that her ‘kids’ were improving day by day through such real-life experience.

Always looking forward

Many of Khoai’s former students are now pursuing education in regular schools where they fit in with friends using the skills they had been taught under her care.

“My four-year-old son was autistic and could not communicate at all, but his condition was greatly improved after spending two years at the school,” Nguyen Nhu Thoa, mother of a former student, said. “Now he is eight and topping his English class at school. Without Khoai and her teachers, my son would still be a senseless boy now.”

Knowing well that autism is a lifelong condition, Khoai still holds on to the belief that efforts always pay off, and that miracles will come to those who try their best.

That is why Khoai always looks forward and does everything she can to transform her students into the source of happiness, instead of sorrow, in their family.

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