Teaching with Humor
By Peter Connor
Public speakers often begin a speech with a joke or an amusing anecdote, and for good reason: to get everyone's attention, to calm the babble of conversations going on in a room full of people. Giving everyone a good laugh at the beginning brings an audience together. It bonds everyone—if only for a moment—the glue being the punch line, the point of the story, the thing everyone gets.
In the classroom, humor can go a long way toward creating an atmosphere that fosters learning. It can relieve tension, break the ice, and open the floor to a discussion in which students are relaxed enough to fully participate and contribute. As a pedagogical tool, it can help reduce student-anxiety, increase retention of lecture-specific information, and diffuse awkward classroom situations.
Humor can also misfire. It's funny that way. The joke you think is funny, others may not. In an academic setting, care must be taken to place jokes and anecdotes in the context of the material being presented and in a manner that supports the lesson being taught. To be effective in the classroom, humor must be constructive.
Ted Powers, professor of psychology at Parkland College, Champaign, IL, in a thoughtful article, Engaging Students with Humor, in The Observer, a publication of the APS (Association for Psychological Science), has some useful guidelines for incorporating humor into your teaching style and classroom routine (Dec. 2005). His overarching message: be careful, as much as it is useful, humor is a delicate thing. The areas of humor Powers discusses include:
Hurtful humor: Avoiding being hostile or demeaning of others
Subject, tone and intent: More about hurtful humor
Situational student/teacher dynamics: Judging the joke climate
Afraid to be funny? Losing your fear of embarrassment
Making humor relevant: Deliver timely, content-oriented humor
Illustrating concepts and content by "Acting it Out"
Using funny movie and TV clips to make a point
Dancing with cell phones: Managing classroom disruptions
Using humor in test and quiz questions: Do you dare?
Using funny life stories, both yours and your students
Powers recommends humor be "used in moderation….You want to teach well, not do a stand-up comic routine." For maximum effect, it should be employed deliberately, and as a general rule, be well thought out.
Citation: Powers, T. (2005, December). Engaging Students with Humor. The Observer, 18(12). Retrieved August 16, 2007, from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1904