two weeks passed - and big changes to come

These lasts two weeks have been busy at my day job, so I have not been able to write anything in my journal. Kind of a pity because I actually had two good weeks.
After the Principal and the scripture coordinator came things worked much better.
In fact on one of the weeks the little ones did better than the older ones!

What am I doing better? I'm not sure, maybe nothing, maybe the problems are just all the normal cycles that I should have expected.

What am I doing different? I gave up on having similar classes for the two groups.
For the little ones I normally have an activity such as reading and then do the sitting. For the older ones I had 10-15 sitting with Bhante's CD and then a talk.

When a boy/girl looks too restless I ask them to lay down on the floor instead of sitting. Once they have calmed down I ask them to sit. I also ask the to sit next to me, and I actually sit as close as possible so when they get distracted I can look directly at their eyes, and the quiet down.

In the last talk (with the older ones) we discussed the eightfold path (yes, the 8 steps in 10 min!). We had already mentioned the first four and I mostly focused on right livelihood. It was funny to see what their interpretations of 'wrong livelihood' were. Several mentioned 'fast food cook' as wrong livelihood, other included garbage man and other hard jobs. After a short discussion they started coming out with those that harm people and animals, 'killer', 'thief', 'drug dealer' and notably 'poacher' were popular ones.

The big changes next week: I got someone to help me with the classes. Chris has accepted to take the Kindy and the year 3 boys, and the school agreed to provide an extra room. I must really thank both. I know that Chris is really busy with her PhD and daughters, so sparing the time is a big commitment. The school has also been extremely nice and helpful. Both the principal and the scripture coordinator are very supportive. Providing an extra room is already a big thing since I understand the school has serious space issues.

More good news include that the Buddhist Council of NSW now has a new 'Education Coordinator',Roselin Nusantara has agreed to take this role, and we are all very grateful. Regrettably the monk that was in charge until now has been extremely busy with his Sangha and had to travel to Japan... Roselin is now going to help appointing new teachers, distributing textbooks and hopefully organizing some event where we can meet other teachers.