Adding humor in teaching

I take education quite seriously—as many people that know me can readily attest to. As someone so focused on the lesson material and the education, humor in the classroom was not something I naturally gravitated toward. My co-teacher and mentor opened the doors for that opportunity. Or more appropriately, he demolished them and opened the floodgates for humor. Even though students don’t laugh at all of the frequent jokes he makes or the people he pokes gentle fun at, the students do find his puns amusing. And it keep them on their toes.

At first, I wasn’t too sure about adding humor in my teaching. (I know, even that sentence sounds like a mathematical formula I’m plugging into my brain…does teaching + humor = success?) After all, shouldn’t education and the learning experience be taken very seriously? Throughout these past few weeks, I’ve noticed that laughter and humor in teaching is extremely valuable. For one, it helps relieve the pressure of learning material. When students see that their teacher is having a good time and challenging students in a humorous way, it helps keep the mood light and the students engaged.

Joking around adds a personality to a teacher. Students often have a hard time picturing their teacher as a human outside of math (or whatever subject that they teach), but humor gives a teacher a personality and ultimately relatability. This relatability is a valuable asset. It helps students listen to someone who would look more like a human than just a talking calculator.

Of course, there is a fine line that bridges humor with insensitivity. My co-teacher/mentor has shown, by example, the areas where to be funny and how to keep things light. Now, this is not to say that students cannot take a humorous teacher seriously. My co-teacher and I have both had serious discussions with the entire class about classroom management issues (something I will talk about in a later post) and each referred a student to the program’s director for disciplinary issues. This balancing act of being serious about learning but not too serious where you can’t have fun has been something I am working on learning.

Humor definitely may not come naturally to everybody. I know it does not come as naturally to me as it does to my co-teacher, but it’s something I feel I will continue to work on. Just like anything else, I feel that being funny takes practice. Don’t take students remarks too seriously—and for that matter, don’t take yourself too seriously…or at least that’s what I tell myself.

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