Hi Pat – Thank you for sharing about your teaching career. It was enjoyable to read about the way you integrated language arts in your social studies classroom. These two subject areas lend themselves to this approach. I’m sure your students’ lives were enriched by reading and listening to classic and modern haiku. It’s interesting that your knowledge of haiku originally came from your own children! They have so much to teach us. I appreciate your kind words.

Anne – I learned about haiku from my own children! I did not teach until they were grown up, when I could finish my college education. I taught Social Studies in a middle school. When I taught the “Unit” on Japan, I posted many examples of classic and modern haiku on the bulletin board and read some to them from In a Spring Garden. I always used a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching SS. The Language Arts teachers were the “official teachers” of haiku! Congratulations on your successes with students.

Pat, thanks so much. I’ll be sure to take a look at the two books you mentioned. Did you teach haiku to children?

Billie and Brad, thank you for your thoughtful and supportive words. I sincerely appreciate them. Teaching children how to understand and write haiku is a true joy in my life, and I hope some of the ways I approach teaching creative writing will resonate with other teachers and parents.

Actually, a bunch of Anne’s students won awards in the 2017 Student Haiku Contest sponsored by the United Nations International School. John Stevenson judged. So her students are already garnering recognition!

Kudos to Anne and her students!