To be a good teacher, you need some of the abilities of a good actor. You must be able to hold the attention and interest of your audience (听众). You must be a clear speaker with a good, strong, pleasing voice which is fully under your control. And you must be able to act what you are teaching in order to make the meaning clearer.

Watch a good teacher, and you will see that he does not just sit before his class. He stands the whole time while he is teaching; he walks about, using his arms and hands to help him with his explanations, and his face to express feelings. Listen to him, and you will hear the loudness and the note (音调) of his voice always changing according to what he is talking about.

The fact that a good teacher has some of the abilities of a good actor doesn’t mean that he will really be able to act well on stage, for there are very important differences between the teacher’s work and the actor’s. The actor has to speak words that he has learnt by heart. He has to repeat exactly the same words each time he plays a certain part, and even his movements and the ways in which he uses his voice are usually fixed. What he has to do is to make all these carefully learnt words and actions seem natural on stage. A good teacher works in quite a different way. His audience takes an active part in his play. They ask and answer questions, they obey orders, and if they don’t understand anything, they will say so. The teacher therefore has to act according to the needs of his audience, which is his class. He cannot learn his part by heart, but must invent it as he goes along.

I have known many teachers who were fine actors in class but were unable to take part in a stage play because they could not keep strictly to what another had written.

There are two important teachers in this world. One is the nature. It was considered to be the best teacher in the old days, because man learned a lot from nature like lighting the fire and growing rice. It also provides man with many necessary things for life, such as water, food and so on.

Hu, 31, is a pioneer in nature education. He set up an organization five years ago. It offers nature-based programs to children under 12 years old, including many outdoor activities, such as planting trees and watching birds.

“Nature is friendly to us if we protect her. And don’t forget that we all are part of nature,” Hu said. The purpose of nature education is to teach people how to understand, respect (尊重) and get on well with nature.

Here comes the other important teacher—a book. The experiences people learned from nature were written down in the form of a book. This was a step forward because man could record their experiences and thoughts.

Books play an important role in our lives. Su Mingjuan, a girl from a poor family in a small village, has finished college and become a good bank clerk. She volunteers to encourage people to read more. She said, “Without reading books, I can’t have such a wonderful life.” Besides Su, millions of people learn from books and have better lives. Some people ever said, “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket (口袋) .”