Brittany's Classroom Management Kit
Humor in the Classroom
"The secret to humor is surprise." Aristotle said.
P.S. I'm a
whale.
Research Resource List
Reviving the Wonder: 76 Activities that Touch the Inner Spirit of Youth by Rick Stuecker -- (Perface & Chapter 2)
Victor Borge: Phonetic punctuation
Etymology of following words:
irony, facetiousness, sarcasm, teasing, kidding
Source (click on text)
Humor is an avenue of communication that can build trust, bonds, create a safe environment that one feel they can take risks and be creative within without fail. Everyday people use humor to tackle situations that they feel uncertain about, such as testing out limits in a playful jokes, bonding themselves to a pre-existing group by understanding the rules of their humor, and also being able to blame people while having the option to deny it as a joking. Humor is overall a tool for people to use in communicate without revealing all of themselves. In that manner, humor isn’t black and white in that it’s not inherently positive or negative. As such, humor can also be used to create confusion, blur social boundaries, and made people feel like they are being belittled or ridiculed. Trevor Strong in his articles The Culture of Humour in the Classroom: The Good, The Bad and the Other explained it as thus, “Humour is like social gunpowder. Use it the right way and you'll have the class seeing fireworks. Use it the wrong way and it will blow up in your face. Yet somehow, people seem to forget just how dangerous it can be. After all, it seems like so much fun at the time.”
In terms of humor in the classroom, all the aforementioned components carry over into beneifts for the classroom. Humor can help the power disparity between students and teacher be lowered to a more open and equal relationship. As comedian Victor Borge said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” Borge showcases this within his own routine, specifically his punctuation comedy routine, because Borge takes something as ordinarily dull as punctuation and by adding unexpected, silly noises attached to the punctuation as he is reading makes something once serious into something funny. In short, Borge relies on oddity and the unexpected to make something funny. It’s similar to if you saw a talking chicken in an elevator that would be strange and funny because it doesn’t happen at all. Also, Borge makes fun of and laughs at himself, such as when he has the book upside down in the beginning of the skit or when he wipes the book down because the noises caused him to spit slightly. This type of mixture between unexpected humor and self-mocking is a safe humor to have in my classroom because it doesn’t rely on something that mocks people other than myself nor anything crass. Also, the type of mocking that Borge does isn’t the type that degrades him, in fact those instances makes him all the more endearing.
Reflection
With the information above, I had devised some proactive approaches to use within my own classroom to ensure that humor is used correctly within my classroom. One proactive approach that I devised is to do a similar excercise that I did above by having my students write down their precieved defintion of the types of humor then look at the real defintions. By having a small discussion over the results, I feel that students will be more aware that hurtful scarsm isn't something to use in a given sitution. On top of that, I will show students examples of when humor was used incorrectly and talk about what made it a poor use of humor. With this knowledge, it shall be easier for my to call out students when they are doing the opposite because they have the vocabularly and awareness for me to talk maturely about it. Also, I would have my students create a humor playbook, where they would write up types of humor with examples that are not allowed in our classroom.
Scenario: Think of a time when you personally were hurt by someone's humor. Describe the situation. How did the teacher handle it? How do you wish the teacher would have handled it? How will you handle it?
In the past I've had some of my peers hurt me with their humor. I recall, one time in Middle School where I was playing volleyball and two girls were mocking me about my ability to serve the ball, which I was really aware of and nervous about. The teacher didn't really do anything to stop them from saying those hurtful things. I wish that the teacher would have said at least something to them to stop laughing and mocking me. In that situation I would have pointed out the behavior as wrong them, which strengthens the rapport between the bullied student and I as Trevor Strong in his articles The Culture of Humour in the Classroom: The Good, The Bad and the Other says is an important part of keeping humor in the classroom. I would also show kids that nobody is perfect by trying to shoot the volley ball myself and mess it up a few times, which shows everyone that we're in a community of learners and thusly on an equal playing field. Lastly, I would talk to the bullies themselves, citing our previous dicussions on humor to use as fodder in our discussion about why saying such things are not okay.
Humor can also breed a sense of community amongst students as they joke around they create an almost secret dialogue between only the members within the group. Moreover, as Ric Stuecker asserts in his book Activities That Touch the Inner Spirit of Youth, humor is based in the “present moment” and brings us back to being children almost in that we drop our worries about the past or future and let go of our social fronts around other people. This breeds a sense of camaraderie amongst people and thusly a space where everyone can risk without fear of being the butt of a joke.
Another aspect of humor in the classroom is that it creates a trusting culture and thusly opens up another method of communicating with students. Much of the time, if they feel comfortable, students will bring up topics with humor that they’d never say in a straightforward way. This can lead to more of a glimpse into who that student is and what’s going on within their minds. In fact, Mary Kay Morrison, an educator-researcher, asserts that kids developmentally joke about things that they are afraid of in order to sooth themselves and become comfortable with them. For example a group of 8th Graders might be unsure, uncomfortable, or afraid of the concept of sex and thusly make jokes about it to get more adjusted to the entire idea.
Another development, character-forming fashion that humor shapes students is that by approaching problem-solving with humor students can become persistence just as Thomas Edison did when he was crafting the light blub and had tried thousands of way only for each to fail. Instead of facing the failures with anger, Thomas Edition said, “We haven’t failed. We now know a thousand things that won’t work, so we are much closer to finding what will.” In this attitude and within a non-judgment space, students are able to play creatively with the same variables as before, but view them into new and different ways without fear of reproach. This is what I hope my classroom ends up being and to create this I have even inserted the assurance of coming to me for questions and not to be shy about it into my syllabus.
Humor's use is not only in dealing with a student’s emotional or developmental, but can improve student’s learning. Mary Kay Morrison, an educator-researcher, said, “We’re finding humor actually lights up more of the brain than many other functions in a classroom. In other words, if you’re listening just auditorily in a classroom, one small part of the brain lights up, but humor maximizes learning and strengthens memories.” In short, humor makes our brain more engaged in the content we are learning about than any other fashion of presenting content. In order to accomplish this goal of using humor in the classroom, Robert McNeely suggests in his article Using Humor in the Classroom: Laughter has the power to fuel engagement and help students learn content that teacher use humor they are comfortable with through games, parody, funny voices, funny clothing, etc. However such activities should be careful to really relate to the topic through either metaphor or right out explaining, because although the activity might fun the students need to be focused on content.
Humor, as aforementioned, is not wholly good or wholly bad and thusly there are some things to be aware of to avoid he bad side of humor. Some unsavory consequences of humor is that it can cause confusion if you use it too much, you can belittle or shame students with it, and can blur boundaries of power between students and teachers if you don’t balance the humor. Something else to be aware of in using humor in the classroom is that there are unseen audience members in your classroom, namely parents and school administrations. Therefore one must take into account their point of view on a humor tactic that you are planning on using. Overall though, a teacher must be aware of everyone’s perspective on something humorous that they are planning to do because what’s funny to one person might be terribly offensive to another person.
Lastly, one must understand the different types of humor that exist in order to navigate how some can be hurtful and how those sound to the ear. Below are some terms that I attempted to define and then looked up the origin and true definition of. It’s interesting to note that my definition of some of these terms were vastly off course from the real definition. That just goes to show someone that you might think you know the types of humor, but haven’t fully considered all it’s aspects or connotations. For example someone might think that sarcasm is the same as kidding, but one is might to insult or show irritation and one is more good-natured. These definitions have cased me to be more aware of the different types of humor and that humor is a tightrope that teachers might walk sometimes from day-to-day.
My Definitions:
Sarcasm – Saying something without sincerity.
Irony – To say something that’s out of context & is funny in how fitting it is.
Facetiousness –Not meaning something that you say.
Teasing – Taking a singular aspect of someone/something and underhandedly making fun of it.
Kidding – Saying something about a singular aspect of someone/something without meaning it.
All definitions from: -- http://www.merriam-webster.com/
All etymologies from: --- http://www.etymonline.com/index.php
True Definitions:
Sarcasm
Definition -- “the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say especially in order to insult someone, to show irritation, or to be funny”
Etymology -- From Greek sarkazein to “speak bitterly, sneer” or literally to “strip off the flesh”
Irony
Defintion -- “a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected” Ex: "It was a tragic irony that he made himself sick by worrying so much about his health"
Etymology -- C. 1500 – Greek eironeia "dissimulation, assumed ignorance," – Ignorance within your control.
Facetiousness
Definition -- “used to describe speech that is meant to be funny but that is usually regarded as annoying, silly, or not proper”
Etymology -- 1590’s – French facétie "a joke" (15c.), from Latin facetia "jest, witticism." It implies a desire to be amusing, often intrusive or ill-timed.
Teasing
Definition -- “to laugh at and criticize (someone) in a way that is either friendly and playful or cruel and unkind”
Etymology -- Old English tæsan "pluck, pull, tear; pull apart, comb" (fibers of wool, flax, etc.) West Germanic *taisijan (cf. Danish tæse, Middle Dutch tesen, Dutch tezen "to draw, pull, scratch," Old High German zeisan) The figurative sense of "vex, worry, annoy" (sometimes done in good humor) emerged 1610s.
Kidding
Definition -- “ to deceive as a joke” or “to engage in good-humored fooling or horseplay”
Etymology -- 1811 – “Thieves’ cant” (secret language used by thieves, beggars, and hustlers in Great Britain) -- "to coax, wheedle, hoax" Probably from kid (n.), "treat as a child, make a kid of."