A Teacher and Student Play with Haiku
Sayen Bañados and Heidi Keating
In a little Texas classroom, a teacher and student explore Haiku, crafting vivid verses that capture the essence of nature and humanity. They weave words like brushstrokes, creating places full of learned and learning experiences. Each Haiku becomes a window into an unexplored world, a suspended moment. Through this art, they find joy in distilling existence into artful lines, reminding us that beauty can bloom in small spaces.
On a personal note
As a husband of a Teacher
When I tell someone that my wife is a teacher the usual response is usually something along the lines of, ‘Oh wow. Thats a hard job.” even if they’ve never experienced it themselves that is what they have heard or maybe they knew a teacher once. Thats a hard job might be the understatement of the century. All schools should have therapist in the building to treat teachers for PTSD all year long. Unsympathetic complaints from parents don’t make the job any better either. Do that job for a week and then imagine it as a career. And for heavens sake DO NOT send your kids to school sick!
My wife comes home from school every day so exhausted she doesn’t even have the energy to complain about her job. So parents teach your children respect for their teachers and for their classroom. If you parents don’t show respect for teachers neither will your children. Teachers are there to teach. They are not there to babysit or to fix your child’s attitudes. Although, on very, very rare occasions, that sometimes happens. But let me kick my soapbox into the corner and get on with the story about this book.
All of the drawings—sketches really—were done while I was homeschooling our son during COVID and my wife who I’ll just call Heidi from here on out had to go teach virtually from her actual classroom. So while I was teaching our son how to add and write and draw I made little sketches of animals as teachers and students. Some I had to draw much later when the book turned out to be a longer than any HaiKu book we have on our shelves. Heidi came home one day and asked me if I had all the little sketches I did during COVID and explained to me how she was planning on inspiring one of her students to keep writing her stories and poems. What an incredible investment into inspiring another human being. The result of that endeavor that took them a year to complete is, of course, Ten Thousand Hands.
So thanks to all you teachers out there for everything you do.
Jim Keating
