educating?

[treeman82]

For the SSA at ZooMASS we have decided to form a "comittee" that will go around to high schools and vocational schools to promote the field of arboriculture, as well as the school of course. I had gone to my old high school today and they said I would be allowed to talk with students about arboriculture. My question to you guys is this... what is the best way to do that? What kinds of demonstrations / tools / etc would be required / work best / etc.? I get rather nervous when around large groups of strange people... so I would assume the less talking I do, the better off I am.

PS. Not gonna do this till January...

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Talk to nick and other chapters that have doen this, maybe talk to Tim Walsh.

Practice public speaking on each other in your off time. Start with small groups then start blending more people in.

 

[underwor]

Just talk about what you know. Don't try to BS, kids are good at picking up on that. Don't get too technical, take some visual aids, limbs that have broken off trees, cross sections showing compartmentalization, a few peices of climbing equipment, etc. Don't try to remember all the technical terms, just point out all there is to see in a peice of wood or a tree and tell them to be observant and unafraid to ask questions. The conversation will carry itself from there in most cases. Remember to dress respectively. This does not mean a suit unless that is your regular gear.

My thoughts.

Bob Underwood

 

[rwilk]

Hey Treeman,

I'm new to this forum and arborculture, but not to speaking to high school students or groups. As a firefighter/paramedic I get to talk to groups all the time. As they have already, don't BS them because they will see it and don't say ah, ah, um a hundred times. If you get waving your hands are swaying, put ONE hand in your pocket, that helps. Make you a small outline to give direction, but I always teach by getting them involved. Ask a bunch of questions. You will be surprised at what they know and how willing they are to let you know. As for props, remember what was cool to you when you started. If you can do a climbing/ascending demo that would be cool. Good luck.

rwilk

 

[treeclimber165]

rwilk

Welcome to the best ????ed arborist forum on the net! I hope you learn a lot here. I thought I knew a lot about tree care after 15 years climbing, then I found this place and realized that I didn't know squat.

 

[treeman82]

Thanks for the really cool ideas guys. Please keep them coming. I know I could get a bunch of cuttings from the tech center on loan. I think I could also pick up some videos, but those would be hard to show as I wish to do this outdoors. I was thinking about a picture album, as well as maybe a couple of issues of TCI and some info from the school, some basic tools, etc.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

How about a thrown (right there before them)together 5/1, that is drawn up into the tree, clove anchoring at base(that with long tail, offers emergency/ controlled lowering), then an 80# girl lifts the teacher? With a belay backup etc. for safety examinations as well.

Mechanics of making a simple notch, not to intersect the lines, setting the arc with the obtuseness of the span of the face cut delivering on the flap axis of the hinge, to the side of overwhelming force(adjsutable), at a length determined by the height of the hinge, that now must be cut to adjsut for leans perpendicular to it's axis (of the hinge flap). How a crafstman with years of experience gets 1 shot to do this right, so steps up and machines out this setup to usher this giant's fall. All this, from the forming of this simple hinge that they have seen, read about, laughed at cartoons............ but inside all these things are going on, and then you stir in safety. This is how expansive life is from simple images and familiarities of books and such. Or something like that!

 

[palmer4670]

How much time will you have? A mistake I have made in the past is to have to many visual aids, you end up not having time to talk about the ones that you really want to because you spent to much time on the less important ones. Keep it simple, you can keep attention and promote participation if you don't scare them off with some elaborate vocabulary and technical explinations, you are not presenting at TCI or somewhere. Most of all, have fun. If it goes good you will want to do it more and more.

Good luck,

Palmer

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Never done any public speaking but my biggest fear would be to run out of material. Can you imagine 5 minutes into an hour long presentation, you've used up your material, and when you ask for questions, not a hand in the place.

Seriously though, you have to have a rope set, footlock up, then burn down really fast. That would get their interest.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Burn down with a big swing, landing on a mark.

Having the material and outline comes with the practice in front of freinds and peers. You learn to pace yourself and intersperce graphics and questions into the presentation

 

[Reed]

And.....

feel passionate about what you know and want to share with others.

Feel empathy with the people you are teaching.

Think about Robert up and out there on the cold frozen prarie and Tom D. in the twin cities - they inspire people. Don't just blast out cold and in many cases dry slanted academic data. Stimulate their curiosity.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

When prepairing the outline, deside what portion of the industry you want to discuss. Say if it is tree climbing, you can start with the ANSI A300 definition of Arboriculture you use in your signature. Then narrow the scope to prunning being the largest employment protion of the industry.

From there how are you going to got; basic climbing techniques? Proper pruning vs. butchery?

Take into concideration your audiance and remember that you need to entertain as well as inform.

Also remember that you are human and your going to flub it, blush, stammer...just dont sweat the little stuff.

 

[treeman82]

If I remember back to when I went to this school, each period was about 40 minutes, or somewhere right around there. Ken, thanks for the idea, but I believe there would be a large insurance issue with that, however I will see if I can bring up something along those lines. This school is comprised mostly of kids who come from wealthy families, lots of million - 3 million dollar houses out there. I was hoping to at least enlighten them as to what arboriculture is, and maybe get one or two headed down the path to being arborists. Not trying to get into science too much, more like an informative, yet fun session.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

No, no, you have it all wrong. You want them to become informed consumers and to convince them to get their parents to hiire arborists.

 

[treeman82]

John, that would be an added bonus, but the main reason why we (the SSA) are doing this is to get more arborists out there to increase the work force.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I forgot to put the in there.

 

[pea]

treeclimber165,
You are right. This is the best form on the net. I have never seen anything like it....

 

[tjk]

The Illinois chapter recently had a demo day for high school, college students. The organizer Tom Green from Western Illinois University recruited several local arborist to help with the demo. Then we let the students climb up on belay and we also had them throwing a throw ball. It was a success. The idea was to inform then of our industry and potentially recruit.

 

[kevinz]

Be outrageous if you can

My suggestion, from a past which included 6 years of high-school science teaching and some amateur theatrics, would be to do something outrageous, if you feel confident to pull it off. What came to mind immediately to me would be to walk into class equipped to climb, with saddle on and every tool you normally climb with on your belt. Even a climbing chainsaw (probably with the fuel drained out for safety reasons). I bet they'll be more questions than you have time to answer.

If possible, let them do something. Could you bring along a bunch of cord and teach them a tautline or Blake's hitch? With a climbing rope secured to a doorknob, you could demonstate how they slide and catch.

As a former science teacher, I could never understand how the other teachers could have any fun in class. In science, we could actually DO something!

These sugegstions only concern the tree climbing aspect of aboriculture. That might not be so bad, as I think that would be the aspect that would most engage kids and teenagers. If you wanted to emphsize another aspect, I'd still suggest trying to think of some way to get them to actually do something.

And, make sure to note that girls can do this work as well as boys. As a male role model, I think that you have to point this out, so that the girls don't just assume that this is a men-only job.

Enjoy.

-Kevin

 

[kevinz]

OT: The good old days in high school

[This was inspired by the comment of insurance liability with doing a demonstration. Too bad.]

I went to a newly built high-school, in the early 70's. When the school was built, they had enough money to build an elevator shaft, but not the elevator. One of my teachers, Brother Paul (Catholic school; Christian Brothers) was into caving. He set up a three story length of Bluewater II to the top of that shaft. On our lunch hour, we would go to the elevator equipment room on the ground floor, WITHOUT SUPERVISION, and ascend and rappel that rope as much as we wanted to. We had been trained to do it properly, and no one ever thought that we would do otherwise. Ah, the good old days without the constant fear of lawsuits.

Some other time, I'll tell the story of bringing a .22 pistol, loaded with blanks, to school for the school play, and nobody ever thought that I might misuse it.

I miss those days.

-Kevin