Using Humor

While I was finishing up my last week of student teaching, I had some time during my prep periods to go and observe other teachers in the building. One of my cooperating teachers made a list of the teachers that she thought was worth observing. So I went around to four different teachers in various subject areas and observed them at their craft. These four observations were so incredibly more helpful and beneficial than the numerous hours I spent observing for my Practicum II experience. It largely has to do with the fact that I now see things through a different lens now that I have actually taught for 14 weeks. There are so many little things that I pick up on now that I didn't before. My main concern before was logging the hours necessary to pass the Practicum and try to defy boredom from a teacher who lectured for 90 minutes straight (and I had to observe him back to back). But now I can spot how the teacher gets the class' attention, what they do with the troublemaker, how they introduce a new topic, etc. This has been so beneficial that I am going to observe at the other high schools in my district.

As I was observing these four teachers, across different subject areas, one thing in particular stood out to me. All use humor in the classroom, and do so incredibly well. As a result, they all have a classroom full of engaged students. Each teacher used humor in a slightly different way, but all had the same effect. One was a smart alack, another used pop culture references, and the other two were sarcastic. I think this use of humor blends seamlessly with how intense they are when teaching. I realized some differences with how I present information and how they do. In addition to using humor, they also are loud and animated. I can easily see why they have the great reputation that they do.

Using humor is something that I tried to incorporate into my bag of teaching tricks. Some of the time it worked but more often than not, it didn't. I realize that some people are born funny and a large part of being funny is your personality. But I think that I was starting to find my place in the classroom and could be starting down that path to being an engaging teacher. I enjoyed some of the back and forth that I had with a few of my students. The funny part is that the keynote speaker at the IBEA conference spoke about how to incorporate humor into teaching. As I sit here and reflect on my student teaching experience, it dovetails nicely with my experience at the IBEA conference.

Seeing these teachers in action motivated me to make humor a much bigger part of my instruction.