Living Museum of Learning
The Students Who Became Her Children
Situation
In January 1988, Miss Deng lost her son after a failed mitral-valve surgery. He died that very night.
The sudden loss devastated her. Friends, colleagues, former students, and even Wu Yajun, who was then the director of the city education bureau, came to her home to offer condolences.
But at that moment, comfort was almost unbearable. Her husband eventually asked the school not to let people disturb her temporarily.
When her former students heard what had happened, they did something she would remember for the rest of her life. They collectively wrote her a letter:
“老师，以后我们都是你的孩子，有任何需要，我们随叫随到。”
“Teacher, from now on, we are all your children. Whenever you need anything, just call us.”
They did not leave those words on paper.
Turning Point
In 2009, Miss Deng was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. By the time it was discovered, it was already at an intermediate stage.
Her former students immediately stepped in.
They helped with everything from registration and finding the right chief physician, to arranging her hospital bed and finding a caregiver. The evening before her operation, students came one after another to her bedside—knowing that after surgery she might not have the strength to receive visitors.
Then came nearly a year of treatment and eight rounds of chemotherapy.
Students from different graduating classes took care of almost everything she needed during that difficult year.
The photograph Miss Deng shared was taken downstairs from her home while she was undergoing chemotherapy. Her hair had completely fallen out. Yet around her stood a large group of students and friends.
She was not alone.
Emergence
The most unexpected story came from a former female student in Hong Kong.
Miss Deng once took her class on a labor trip to Beifeng. During the trip, the girl experienced her first menstrual period. Frightened and embarrassed, she began to cry.
Miss Deng quietly took care of her. She bought eggs and red wine from a local farmer and asked the school cook to prepare them for the girl.
For Miss Deng, it was simply something a teacher should do for a frightened student.
Decades later, while Miss Deng was undergoing cancer treatment, she received a letter from that former student together with HK$1,000.
The student wrote that her mother had specifically told her to thank Miss Deng.
One small act of kindness had stayed in both mother and daughter's hearts for decades.
Miss Deng said:
“我真是于心不安了。”
“I almost feel undeserving of their gratitude.”
But perhaps that is exactly how kindness works.
The person who gives often remembers a tiny moment and thinks nothing of it.
The person who receives may carry it for a lifetime.
Learning
A teacher may never know which small moment will become important in a student's life.
A lesson may last an hour.
A kindness may last a lifetime.
Miss Deng did not keep a record of what she had given her students. Her students did.
When she needed them most, they returned—not because they owed her anything, but because she had become part of their lives.
She once told her students that education was about more than mathematics or schoolwork.
Perhaps this is another kind of education: showing someone how to care for another human being, simply by caring for them first.
And perhaps her students' greatest gift was not the hospital arrangements, the caregivers, the money, or the countless visits.
It was that they kept their promise:
“From now on, we are all your children.”
Theme
Love remembered
A teacher can touch a student's life through something so small that she herself barely remembers doing it.
Through years of ordinary encounters, attention, kindness, and trust. Human relationships are built one small act at a time.
Because what looks like a small kindness to one person can become a lifelong source of strength for another.