Kakyitso has taught in Hainan Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Qinghai province for 21 years. Before 2009, when she was transferred to No 1 Minzu Boarding Primary School in Gonghe county, she had already worked in three towns in the prefecture.

Because of the mountainous terrain of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the distances between villages can be huge, while the extreme weather conditions dissuade new arrivals so there aren't enough qualified teachers to allow every village to run even a small school.

In 1996, Kakyitso taught a class that had just six students. "The students lived a long way from the school and on snowy days, they couldn't attend. It was a very difficult time; we were so poor we couldn't afford coal so we had to burn dried animal feces," she said.