How Trees Teach.

How Trees Teach;

A Hypothetical Pedagogical Dialogue

by james bezerra

EXTERIOR, NIGHT. A WILLOW TREE sits atop a single hill in an otherwise flat plain. The sky is speckled with the pinprick light of stars. The shape of a man can just barely be seen as he trudges up the side of the hill. He reaches the top and stands under the willow, panting. He the only teacher in the town’s one-room school house at the bottom of the hill. His name is CHATSWORTH and he sits down and gazes out over the plains.

CHATSWORTH (speaking to the WILLOW TREE): I come here to talk to you when I don’t know what to do. My students, today I don’t even know if I helped them at all. They all had their phones out. I can’t get them to put their phones away. I have asked them and they put them away for a little while, but by the next day, there they are again, the phones again.

WILLOW TREE: (The night breeze lifts the long wisps of the WILLOW TREE’s branches high into the air.)

CHATSWORTH: I know! That’s how I felt too. I never would have gotten away with that when I was in school. We used to respect the instructors. When your teacher said to sit your butt down and read, that’s exactly what you did.

WILLOW TREE: (The breeze slips away and the wisps sink back down and the tree seems to be shrugging.)

CHATSWORTH: Okay, that may not be exactly how it was. Selective memory comes with age, but still, we didn’t have the phones. They seem like such a distraction. I really do believe that if I could get them to put them away then I would really be able to teach them, you know? Teach them the way that I was taught. It worked well for me.

WILLOW TREE: (A much more jagged breeze whips some of the wisps quickly up into the air, where they vibrate violently.)

CHATSWORTH: I know, I know. They live in a world that is unlike the one I grew up in, and that isn’t just age talking. They’re inundated with everything; ads and infotainment and even more ads. There must be a way to take what I have been taught and craft it to help them understand the world that they are going to have to survive in. It is likely a world that will require the same lessons, but new parables with which to teach them.

WILLOW TREE: (The wind releases the wisps and they settle back into place as they were earlier in the night.)

CHATSWORTH: You always seem to have the answers.

CHATSWORTH gets to his feet, pats the WILLOW TREE and begins to trot back down the hill, whistling as he goes.

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