One of my favorite people in history and one of my role models is a little Franciscan monk named William of Occam who lived in the Middle Ages. He was a monk and a scientist. Don’t you like that combination of life callings? I do.
"All things being equal,” he is famous for stating, “The simplest solution tends to be the best one.”
His statement came to be known as Occam’s Razor because it’s a thinking tool that helps cut to the essence of people, places and things...helps get to the heart of the matter.
Simple is better.
So as I sit in my quiet classroom on this Friday afternoon, I’m thinking of the simplest of poems - Haiku’s.
Here are some I wrote.
They are simple yet they hold the complexity of the life of a teacher and a writer.
They hold me.
I hope they hold you, too.
Simply hold you.
Teaching Haikus (a reflection)
teacher’s weathered hands,
planting in the broken ground
working, growing hope
an empty classroom
on a cold December day
hopes and dreams grow here
number 2 pencil,
a story to be written
on a bright new page
immigrant children
walk into the classroom and
sit down quietly
at the school window,
a child stands alone outside
under a shade tree
little bonsai tree,
growing slowly, unnoticed
in the morning sun
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