Friday 10th February 2023

I have got to the end of the week at Tea Leaf Centre Nanu Oya, and what a very pleasant week it has been. I have absolutely enjoyed staying in one place for the week, and it has enabled me to bond so much better with the staff and the students. Daya was in Udapusselawa today with Yadharshini, so I did my best to support Nakiba (Miss Nizam) who is a young lady that I believe will go far, as she has great potential.

I did not have much in the way of paperwork today, so I spent a good amount of time with the students, including  taking a role-play session this morning that followed on from a lesson yesterday, where they learned about how to leave a job appropriately. One group had to role-play how not to hand in your notice, whilst the other group did a role-play showing the correct procedures for handing in your notice.

I sat in on a Success and Ethics lesson in the afternoon, delivered by Nakiba, which I greatly enjoyed, as it was all about how to evaluate yourself - knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, something these students do seem to require a lot of help with. They have to bring a small book to use as a Discovery Journal, where they write about themselves and their personal development over the course of the One-Year Diploma.

I left school at 15:00 and went to the Grand Hotel, as I felt quite tired after the week, and I just needed my own personal space to chill out and relax. I sat outside by the artificial water feature, and I was lucky enough to find they had live music playing today - a pianist and a saxophonist, which made my afternoon and evening a very enjoyable one. I am looking forward to having a fairly quiet weekend before my travels next week.

Today's photos show The Grand Hotel getting ready for Valentine's Day next Tuesday, my musical entertainment, and the lovely staff who work mainly in the Tea Room.













Comments

  1. CharlesFebruary 11, 2023 at 3:04 AM

    That the students learn to 'leave a job appropriately' before they've even got it seems to demonstrate a holistic approach to education which may be lacking here in the UK, I wonder.
    Enjoy your quietish weekend, as you gear up for next week's adventure...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saturday 5th October 2024

Image
It's my fifth trip to Sri Lanka, but on this occasion I am at last joined by my wife, Valerie, and it will be lovely not to be on my own this time. We flew out of London Heathrow Airport one hour late at 22:30 UK time on Friday, and after a rather excruciating eleven hour flight, we eventually landed at Colombo Airport just after 13:30 Sri Lankan time on Saturday. I slept for a few hours on the journey, but Valerie struggled to get any sleep at all. Sandra Wanduragala met us at Colombo Airport, and we drove into Colombo for a couple of hours - meeting up with her daughter, Selena, at the Good Market, which we really enjoyed and would love to go back to. We then went back to Selena's home, where it was good to be able to freshen up a little bit, and enjoy a nice cup of tea, before our driver, Rohan drove us to Kurunegala, where we will be based for the next two months. Arriving in Kurunegala, we met up with my good friend Tharika and her daughter, Evinka, to have dinner at Sri B...
Read more

Monday 7th October 2024

Image
We got cracking today with our prime reason for being here - to support the work of the Royal International School in Kurunegala. We worked together today to give Valerie a chance to settle in at the school, and we are having a gentle start at the Pre-Primary Department, where we will be spending 3 days seeing what they do so well there, before moving on this Thursday to the Junior Department, which is, of course, where our true area of expertise lies. We received a wonderful welcome from both staff and students as we arrived at the school this morning, including a group of girls performing a beautiful, traditional dance for us. It was lovely doing the few lesson observations with Valerie today, before we work separately from tomorrow onwards. The standard of teaching in the Pre-Primary Department is truly impressive, and we were pretty amazed by what we witnessed today. We are both enjoying it so much already! Sandra (who founded the school) and Ravi (the Managing Director) popped rou...
Read more

Friday 16th February 2024

Image
It was my final day in the Pre-Primary Department of the Royal International School today, which was kind of sad, as they have been so welcoming, and I have had the most amazing time there. Miss Agatha and Miss Tharika run a very tight team that manages 902 children from Toddlers to Nursery to Lower Kindergarten (LKG) to Upper Kindergarten (UKG) extraordinarily well, and which provides an excellent foundation for these pupils' learning journey. I had a wonderful morning where I was observing Number lessons with the UKG Co-ordinator and the English Co-ordinator (seeing the level of English in the Number lessons). In almost all the lessons, the quality of the teaching was exceptionally high, with the attention to detail - and in particular with the resources they had prepared - quite incredible. And apart from all of that, it was great fun, which is, in my opinion what learning should be for children. I had a nerve-wracking afternoon, as I had to deliver a session on time management ...
Read more