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Survey Says . . . THF Education Wall

Every September the Board of Directors and Associates of The Haiku Foundation are sent a survey. Their responses help to guide our growth and direction. We’d like to broaden our input, and so we’ll be asking you to respond to a series of questions, one per week, over the next half-year. Your replies will be weighed in our assessment of our performance.

Today’s question: Education

The Education Wall is now available online. Ellen Olinger, haiku poet and much honored professional teacher, has designed a platform in grade bundles 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, high school and college, adult. Additional classroom exercises by multiple teachers and poets have been added, as well as theoretical articles on the teaching of haiku.

Please assess how well The Haiku Foundation is delivering on this topic. Indicate your assessment of our performance to date by choosing one of the options:

Excellent

Good

Fair

Poor

Abandon

Please feel free to add additional comments. Thank you in advance for your consideration, and for helping us make The Haiku Foundation a better resource.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Troutswirl is an excellent opportunity for us – in the hinterlands – to connect with other haikuists . It is a great way to start the day. Learning and inspiration is its value. I am still learning my way around this complicated PC. I just was able to download the latest book. Wonderful. Thank you.

  2. I have been teaching haiku to elementary school children for twenty years. I really like Ellen’s lessons. I have some others that I’ve taught that have been inspired by Patricia Donegan’s “Haiku: Asian Arts and Crafts for Creative Kids.” Some of these lessons examine juxtaposition, season words, surprise, and using our senses. I wonder if THF could distribute an appeal to those of us who teach haiku to kids so that we could add to Ellen’s great core lessons. Also, perhaps THF could sponsor a kids’ haiku contest similar to the Virgilio one for high schoolers.

    Best Regards,
    Brad Bennett

    1. Dear Brad, Thank you for your kind comment and I look forward to learning more about your work. I studied and worked in special education for 20 years, from 1973 – 1993. Then I was basically away for a time, with health issues, and then the privilege of helping with my mother’s care for many years. My work in education also helped me know how to help her. She was a professor in the English Dept. at UW-Milwaukee. We shared so often about the language arts, though those times grew steadily smaller.

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      My elementary class in the 1970s was a new special education program. I was certified in 3 areas at UW-Madison. Some of my students would not have been served in a public school before. The principal, parents, teachers, and all at the school could not have been more supportive. I loved teaching the language arts. I might have 9 students, with 9 different lesson plans, plus the overall group plan. Excellent teacher assistants. So collaboration has always been essential.

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      I sent an email to Jim Kacian in Spring 2012, offering to serve as a volunteer. We decided on the content of the lessons you read though many emails. Then I wrote the drafts, and relied on my knowledge of the effective instruction literature, which you would know well. Montage, edited by Allan Burns, was my textbook; I am not an editor. From experience though, I wanted to create lessons that included a lot of listening (Awareness) and Reading of haiku, before writing haiku. You’ve seen the adaptations, and how we honor various learning styles and paces of learning. Of course we defer to the parents and teachers – here to serve and hope to learn in return.

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      Thanks again. I am not currently teaching, and what the work needs now, in my view, is the teachers, and teachers of haiku. So grateful to all, and grateful I could help begin this work, along with Jim Kacian as editor, Dave Russo’s help, and many others. The Haiku Registry, edited by Billie Wilson, also was a great support. Ellen

  3. Tom Painting’s Haiku Workshop 1, lesson on kigo, and holistic plan for junior-high students are excellent and can be modified for the college level. They are what I have been waiting for. Thank you!

  4. Thank you for this survey question. As Jim Kacian stated, the education page has surely grown since we first published the first set of lessons in 2013. This week, we added “Stories from the Field, by Kala Ramesh.” Another more recent addition is the section we began for Higher Education.

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    One of our goals is to help a teacher who may be on break for a short time connect easily with all of the excellent content at THF. The new web design at THF, and work by Dave Russo and others, has helped this process. We link to the Registry Pages for poets where possible, Montage, THF Digital Library, Video Gallery, information about the new journal JUXTA, etc., as makes sense within the context of various lessons and other content.

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    For new readers at THF, you can simply click on HAIKU LESSONS, from the home page, and you will be transferred to the education page.

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    I am grateful to THF, and Jim Kacian as editor, for this opportunity to volunteer in education. My career was in special education. This is truly collaboration, and we hope this work is useful to many students, parents, teachers, practice teachers, scholars, and others. We look forward to the day when there are new haiku on the education page, inspired by the many contributions of people here.

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    Always a work-in-progress!

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    Best wishes, Ellen

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