Student Mandalas

The last time I taught Siddhartha, I was student teaching at Montana Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Marion, Montana. This time, I was teaching English A1 students -- Turkish students whose English is so excellent, they have placed in the Literature course for students whose mother tongue is English. The assignment was to produce a mandala to accompany their essays in which they juxtaposed the journeys of three people from the following list: Siddhartha, Vasudeva, Govinda, the Buddha, Herman Hesse, and/or themselves. They were to weave in symbolic elements from the novel as well as some features of Buddhist mandalas. Although their explanatory paragraphs are not included here, enjoy their fantastic artwork below: