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Teaching - Teaching is a communication process where the receiver must receive what the sender sends. If the sender is sending noise, which is disordered items, the receiver will not, or cannot, receive what is being sent. A major problem with trying to teach about natural systems is that some of the senders- teachers - have not touched or connected with the subjects that they are trying to send. No aspiring musician would ever think of going to a teacher who has not excelled in the playing – touching of the instrument. You cannot learn to play an instrument without touching it. Yet some people in some disciplines keep going to so-called - teachers who have not “played the instrument.” To Touch Trees means connecting with them. Yes, books can help as guides, but in the end a person must make connect with the trees and in doing so connect with nature.

Teachers teach what they have been taught. Teachers teach. They try to get the mental "engines" started. They stimulate you. To keep the "engines" going, students must be disciplined enough to keep adding more information to the mind. The adding process is motivation. Think of your car. The key connects the battery and starter. Once the engine turns over, it begins to run on gasoline. Teachers are batteries. Gasoline, or self -discipline, keeps the system going - motivation. Many highly intelligent people ran from high school biology and chemistry because of the ways they were taught. These people deserve another chance. Teaching is the most fulfilling and yet the most frustrating task in the world. To open a closed mind is the highest reward for a teacher. Product pushers come and go, teachers stay. To start a person thinking is the same as starting a jet airplane. Now they can both fly. Many people have a very thin line between stimulation and irritation. The real "trick" or aim of teaching is to see how close you can get to the line of stimulation without crossing it into the zone of irritation. Tolstoy said it best when he said that some people teach the same things so long that even when they are faced with overwhelming facts to the contrary, they will not change. If people do not know who you are before they get to the lecture, no amount of introduction will change their feelings for you. Students used to fail by misspelling photosynthesis, or forgetting the makeup of glucose. It was not teaching: It was boring memorization. Some people quit school because they really wanted to get out there and touch trees and learn.
IN OTHER WORDS. Teaching is Touching (Click here.)

Things Trees can Teach us Click here

(See ARBORICULTURE IN THE 21st CENTURY, SHIGO, 1997)

(See TREE EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY, SHIGO, 2000)