Your teachers have been misled by anti-tree-octopus propaganda from textbook publishers.
The book publishing industry consumes 30 million trees a year. Many of these trees come from logging activity on the Olympic Peninsula that is encroaching on tree octopus habitat. Efforts to protect this habitat and save the tree octopus are seen by some in the publishing industry as a threat to their profits, increasing the cost of wood pulp used to make paper. Consequently, publishers—especially those in the politically powerful textbook sector—have embarked on a disinformation campaign against the tree octopus.
Unlike the timber industry—which in previous centuries fomented fear of the then-plentiful tree octopuses to encourage mass cullings to stop their pulp products from being ink-stained by octopuses stuck in the millworks—book publishers are instead fomenting tree octopus denialism. Since 2002, over 40 textbooks and teachers' guides have been published that call into question the very existence of tree octopuses and instruct teachers to work this propaganda into classes unrelated to biology or ecology (where it will more likely be accepted uncritically).
Furthermore, publishers have tied this denialism to the meme that "the Internet is making kids dumb". (See for instance this press release from Pearson, one of the largest textbook publishers in the world, trumpeting the dangers of the Internet while including gratuitous tree octopus denialism). The industry's self-serving solution is that kids should get off the Internet and, of course, read books instead.
Book publishers hope that the youth of today will be the tree octopus denialists of the future, and that this generation's lack of concern will end the "tree octopus problem" for good. Please don't fall for their hoax.