Poetry
Call and response
“As a student, I hated writing response papers,” says Madeleine McLeester, AB’05, AM’08, “and as an instructor I hated grading them.” But she wanted the students in her Integrative Research Seminar—one of three required courses students take during the Calumet Quarter—to reflect on their reading and the field trips. So she hit upon a simple 17-syllable solution.
Although the Calumet program attracts the occasional English or art major, most are environmental studies majors. The haiku assignment “actually works better for people who aren’t creative,” says McLeester. “It forces that reflection loop.” And even if the result is appalling, reading your haiku aloud at the beginning of class, she says, is “only a 30-second embarrassment.—Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93
Calumet haiku Tells us a lot about them Non-standard stories An imagined past landscape What do we want now? How well a place is doing Burn it for science
| On the Field Museum And flotsam that built us up What makes up nature? Preserved in plastic packets But some mislabeled As a sign of our respect Or just for study? |
