A teacher tutors a student at a classroom in the Aidian township of Ningming county, South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, June 22, 2020. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

President Xi Jinping encouraged China's teachers on Wednesday to proactively explore new educational methods for the new era and bolster their professional expertise.

In his greetings to teachers nationwide ahead of Teachers' Day, which falls on Thursday, Xi commended the country's educators for making important contributions to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xi expressed his hope that teachers can bear in mind their original aspiration－the fostering of virtue through education－as well as their mission to cultivate talent for the Party and the State and make greater contributions to nurturing the next generation of builders of socialism

In the face of the pandemic, teachers across the nation braved difficulties, fought on the front line of epidemic containment, gave lessons online and safeguarded the physical and mental health of hundreds of millions of students, he said.

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In doing so, they dedicated themselves to the largest scale of online teaching in the world, he added.

With 2020 being the final year of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieving the goal of poverty alleviation, Xi praised teachers for their work to help stop poverty from being passed on to the next generation.

Teachers display great professional ethics and a sense of responsibility as they inspire children from rural areas, he said.

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Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, expressed his hope that teachers can bear in mind their original aspiration－the fostering of virtue through education－as well as their mission to cultivate talent for the Party and the State and make greater contributions to nurturing the next generation of builders of socialism.

He urged authorities at various levels to care more about teachers in order to make teaching the most esteemed and admired profession, and to enable the whole of society to respect teachers and give priority to education.

It is also important to coordinate normalized epidemic containment measures with teaching activities to ensure the across-the-board reopening of schools in a safe manner, he said.

China now has 17.32 million full-time teachers, who provided long-distance teaching to the 280 million students across the country during the pandemic. Meanwhile, millions of rural teachers and hundreds of thousands of volunteer teachers are working in the nation's most remote and least developed areas.

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Xi's message has been well received by the country's educators, who said that it boosted their morale.

Lin Chen, a professor at the School of Applied Economics of Renmin University of China, said Xi's greetings greatly encouraged teachers as he recognized their arduous efforts during the pandemic.

"We also felt keenly that our responsibility is huge," he said.

Zhan Hongyi, an associate professor at the School of Education of Renmin University of China, said Xi has given a specific task to teachers, which is to accelerate research on the impact of new technologies on teaching and how they can use new technology to train innovative talent.

Contact the writers at xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn