I am excited and honored to be a delegate to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, I consider it as a reward and source of encouragement for me to work harder for the children with disabilities, Tsering Lhamo told Tibet Daily.

Tsering Lhamo is from the region's northern Nagchu city, and she is the headmaster of Nagchu Special Education School, a school dedicated to children with disabilities.

She has been working in the education sector for 28 years, since she graduated from Xizang Minzu University in 1994. She was appointed as headmaster of Nagchu Special Education School in 2013, which is Nagchu's first such school to provide nine-year compulsory education for children and adolescents who are visually impaired, deaf-mute or in special needs.

I got the opportunity to learn about special education while I was attending a lecture in 2003. I was overwhelmed by the teaching experiences shared by the headmaster of Lhasa Special Education School that day, and that is why I accepted the job without a second thought in 2013, said Tsering Lhamo.

After I was posted in this school, my colleagues and I began to gather more disabled children here. We conducted extensive tours in Nagchu, identifying eligible children and persuading them to join our school, she said.

With an average altitude of up to 4,500 meters, Nagchu is a vast place and most parents in the area were unaware of the importance of special education. As a result, they spent almost two months visiting families in surrounding villages before school started, and took in 60 disabled children.

"We are not only teaching them knowledge and skills, we also have to play the role of parents; our daily tasks also include nursing, helping them take shower, doing laundry, feeding them, and helping some go to the toilet," she said.

"This job has brought me many 'first-time experiences', including the first time cleaning up a student after they went to the bathroom, the first time taking a disabled student to seek medical help in another province, and many more," she added.

To communicate with speech-impaired students, she taught herself sign language, and she even offered door-to-door teaching to some severely disabled children.

Thanks to her efforts, 65 students of the school have found jobs or started their own businesses, and 17 students have had the chance to participate in the National Special Olympics Games.