2nd class

Yesterday was my second class already, and I'm still surviving!

I have 30 students in the first group. They go from Kindergarten to year 2.
The second group has 20 kids, years 3-6.

The second group was much easier. The 10 fewer students make a lot of difference.

On week one, the first class logistics utterly failed me.
I wanted the kids in the first group to colour a set of drawing from the life of Buddha.
I started handing them out when I realized that it would take too long, so I had the great idea of asking 3 students to help distributed the 3 pages that everybody should have worked on. I asked each of them to distribute 1 page, of course what happened was that all students ended with just one, at random.... When the time came to color, everybody was saying 'but I do not have this one...' or 'I do not have that other'.
At the end of the 30 minutes I had not achieved any of the things in my list for the day.

For the second -older- group, on week one, I already did a bit better. The were not so many logistic problems and we read the story and many even wrote the things I aked them to...

On week two, I strated by 'refreshing' the story of Prince Siddharta, up t the point were we have finished last week. This was a drawing where he is sitting under a tree, just before enlightement.
I then went over the life of Buddha as a teacher. Starting when he gets enlightened, going over the growing Sangha and responsabilities and ending in his death (I did not explain Nirvana).
The message was the first step: 'Right Understanding". Right understanding as seeing that things change. We can not be happy forever and we can not be sad forever. Things appear and dissapear. The same with our lives. Even the Buddha dies, just like anyone else. And with death comes sadness. I did not mention Nirvana, but we talked a bit about deaht and some of the kids mentioned how they felt sad when a family member died, or they pet died.

We then sat, probably fpr like 10 minutes, with several interruptions.
But this week we started seating, and that is what matters.
Out of the 30, 10 did really well, 15 where OK but around 5 were terrible. and I mean terrible.
When we got to the seating in the second group I had about the same proportions.
Of course 20 is much easier to manage.

Interestingly, many did really well. They sat for the 10 min and could have easily done it longer.

We discussed briefly about how they practice at home. About a third actually sit periodically with their parents. Normally in the evenings. One of the girls in the second group was really cute about it and asked if were going to sit next week. When I asked 'would you like me to?' she said 'oh yes, please' in such a sincere way that made me very happy. In fact when someone asked how often did I practice, I was a bit embarassed saying that I tried to do it everyday, but it was not always possible and sometimes I just did walking meditation. I should be able to teach with my example.