January in Florida, a “classroom” in a Japanese garden, and haiku as a reflective device for students: these were the ingredients that added up to the unique professional development workshop I taught a while ago for Florida teachers.
We gathered at the gorgeous Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens on a perfect, sunny afternoon and walked out on the path around the lake to the Yamato-kan, a traditional building that holds some of the museum’s exhibits. My group of teachers settled themselves on the building’s porch as I set my materials on a handy boulder.
We started by discussing the structure and significance of haiku; in this country, we tend to dismiss it as a simplistic form of poetry, its familiar 5-7-5 rhythm of syllables best executed by third graders with a few minutes to spare at the end of a busy class period.
In Japan, though, haiku is a revered art form. These deceptively simple poems describe a moment in time; they contain (sometimes coded) references to the seasons, to life, death, Zen, the impermanence of all things. Their use of “cutting words”–for which there are no equivalents in English–creates a “turn” in the verse, shifting the scene or the emotion and urging us to examine more deeply the moment being painted for us.
We moved from haiku into a discussion of haibun–a prose passage followed by one or more haiku. The prose and the poetry comment on the same scene, the same moment, but in different ways.
For me, haibun holds some of the benefits of arts integration: in the same way that writing a personal essay and creating a torn-paper collage, for example, will engage students’ “multiple intelligences” and enable them to approach and express an experience in two different fashions, haibun can be used to get a student to use two completely different types of writing to describe or recall the same moment.
We brainstormed ways to use haiku and haibun to get students to write about their own experiences–to describe a field trip to the Everglades, for example. Or how to have students sum up something they’ve read by writing a haiku about it; this compels them to interact with the text, to join it to their original poem and thus create a haibun.
Poetry is “the best words in the best order”; thus, it’s a great device for teaching precision of word choice, vocabulary, descriptive writing, and reflection. Haiku and haibun, with their rich layers of meaning and history, are particularly well suited to these uses in the classroom.
The portion of the workshop that was the most fun was sending the teachers off to find an inspirational spot beside the lake or under the trees so they could write their own haiku or haibun about that particular moment–a creative afternoon spent amidst quiet beauty.
Afterward, we gathered back on the porch to share what we had created. The teachers’ poems were exquisite. Thoughtful and evocative, they distilled the afternoon down to its lovely essence. One teacher composed a haibun about her experience that afternoon:
Sitting outside. Gaining new knowledge. Listening to new ways to teach. Becoming inspired by her words, the surrounding and me. “Go off on your own.” But I’m already there. Planning, preparing and thinking. Ideas flow like the river in front of me. Some sit beneath a tree, others move away to find peace. We stay close, sharing ideas from one another. A lone bird stands close, doing his own thing. I laugh, envisioning a freedom I no longer experience.
quiet conversation
soft footsteps approach us
ideas lost
Creative teachers in a beautiful setting, getting inspired and excited about ways to get their students inspired and excited. It was a rewarding afternoon.
Cora Bresciano 