Teaching and Learning - A Word Picture

I hope this beautiful picture of the task of the teacher and student from Izaak Walton will inspire your teaching:

Come out from under your four walls and roof. Declare a holiday. Take the road with me to Thatch House, that admirable hostelry where good companions gather, where at the end of the day you'll find a good telling of tales, a good singing of ballads, and linen sheets that look white and smell of lavender, and you can listen to the refrain of Coridon's song: "Then care away and wend along with me."
     Stand with me at mid-day, in the open, where the sun casts no shadow, and let us together consider all things concerning our art - that which lies back of us - the antiquity of it, and that which lies close about us and claims our immediate attention.  I would have you know that tingling mood which comes to all who share the best that they have found.  I would have you honor this art, and those who have gone before - who have set it in high places.  Let your eye be single in all that it looks upon.  And let us share that humility which is at once the boon and the true grace of all who learn together.

as quoted in The Way of the Storyteller by Ruth Sawyer.