Humor
A sense of humor can carry you a long way in teaching for several reasons. Teachers generally rate high on the emotional intelligence scale, so a sense of humor would naturally follow from that. Humor puts students at ease, engages them, and may even make learning fun.
Humor can also be used to diffuse intense situations as well. For example, I used to have a student that dominated the conversation in the classroom. Often the class discussion would die when she would inevitably chime in. I spoke with her about giving others a chance to speak, but I wasn’t getting through to her. One student became frustrated with her talking and blurted out, “you never listen! Why don’t you try listening for a change!” The class was silent. After basking in the silence for a moment I jumped in and said, “Now you know the agony of 90% of the teachers in the world.” It wasn’t that funny, but given the intensity of the situation we all laughed including the overly participatory student. I then used that moment to remind everyone to give everyone a chance to speak.
Humor also serves as good medicine outside the classroom. I can feel the cares and stress of the day fall away when I get some good belly laughs going.
- What makes you laugh?
- How do you use humor in your teaching?
Nothing makes me laugh harder than this.
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