MC Ngoc Lan and teacher Kim Phan came to the first memory, which was a sunflower. Teacher Kim Phan shared: “In 2007, I happened to read an article about the sunflower Le Thanh Thuy, a girl with bone cancer and extraordinary willpower. I followed her life, after she passed away, the program Thuy's Dream was born.
At that time, I was working as a primary school teacher at Torch of Life School in District 1. In 2009, journalist To Oanh came to my house and invited me to be in charge of a literacy class at the Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital. I immediately agreed.
After agreeing, I thought that I would not have time for the children if I taught morning and afternoon boarding at the school.
After a while, the school's Board of Directors realized that this was a meaningful job, so they gave me a free shift every Friday afternoon. On September 4, 2009, a literacy class for pediatric patients at the Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital began.
Initially, the literacy class had 45 first graders, with the sole goal of teaching them how to read and write their names, because life is too short. However, there were some students who discovered they had cancer when they were in second, third, or even sixth, seventh, eighth, or ninth grade. They also wanted to join the literacy class at the hospital.
Ms. Kim Phan mobilized teachers and students with kind hearts to take on the teaching job. At that time, Ms. Kim Phan was the one who connected, organized, and arranged the time for this special class.
Coming to the next memory is the set of math problems for grades 3 and 5 prepared by teacher Kim Phan herself for the children, this is a very special lesson plan. Although the children are cancer patients, some of them are very good at studying, those who are good at Literature write very well and touchingly.
In the classroom, many students had to go home to go to the hospital to get blood and medicine. Ms. Kim Phan told about the case of Phan Anh Truong: “Every Friday, he stands outside the gate looking in. When I asked him, he was in 6th grade, but I only taught up to 5th grade so he couldn’t come in. Every week he stood there looking, so I called him in to give him his homework. Some of the math problems were difficult, but he did them very quickly, in a moment.”
The last memories that Ms. Kim Phan sent to the program were two notebooks of two unfortunate children who passed away due to cancer.
Ms. Kim Phan choked up as she shared: “During 15 years of teaching, I kept all the notebooks of every child who came to class, about 1,500 of them, meaning that many children came to study, the children came and went...
Some of the children who died, I sent them to their families, but some of the children whose families I could not contact, I still kept. Those two books belonged to a 5-year-old child, the naughtiest in the class but also the cutest.
In the farewells with students, sometimes it was a permanent farewell, but sometimes there were farewells because the students were on leave and happily said goodbye to the teacher. Ms. Kim Phan still clearly remembers the image of a boy who, when he was on leave, turned around at the gate and waved goodbye to her, promising to see her again in a month.
MC Ngoc Lan was touched by Ms. Kim Phan's heart for children with cancer.
At the end of the program, MC Ngoc Lan, on behalf of the program, sent Ms. Dinh Thi Kim Phan a bouquet of fresh flowers, wishing her good health.
