For the last 3 weeks, Monica, a Volunteer came to the class to help with the teaching. She was really nice and I was hoping she would be able to teach Kindy and year 1 that currently have no teacher. On the second week she made the case that it would be better to teach in a school that has no teacher whatsoever. She was probably right.
The kids behaved pretty bad the first two of these weeks. The third one I started sending the restless ones out, to their normal class. I will have to keep strict on the discipline or we will have the same problem I had last year.
The classes have not been as structured as they used to be. We worked on a historic topic on alternate weeks.
When we discussed the four sights, I showed a snippet off the BBC video.
Siddharta was very sensitive to what happened around him so the King was very concerned about the type of things he saw and heard. But Siddharta wants to see the world.
The story tells how Siddharta leaves the palace with his friend/servant Channa. On each excursion he sees an important sign, and on each occasion Channa explains how that could happen to anyone: A sick man, is the first one, then an old, and a dead man. With these first three sights he faces for the first time the suffering of the cycle of life. On the four one he sees a monk, begging for food. And Channa explains that he is a wise man looking for answers to the problems of life.
On the last class the kids wrote on small cards, made by the Buddhist council, their name, year and an act of kindness they did recently. We then read and discuss them (without saying aloud who wrote what). The Council will collect them all for the Vesak celebrations.
