In the quietest classrooms, teaching children with hearing loss, she has spent 34 years creating the most powerful sound of all: hope.

Liu Lingli is a deputy to the National People's Congress and a special education teacher in Hengyang City, Hunan Province. After decades on the front line of deaf education, she developed teaching approaches such as lip and tongue drills, situational teaching and cooperative learning, and even compiled her own speech training materials.

With patience, warmth and persistence, she has taught more than 80 children with hearing loss, and more than 20 of them have gone on to college. For many families, she did more than teach speech. She helped open the door to confidence, communication and a place in society. 

(Photos via Sanxiang Metropolis Daily)