I have a confession to make. I’m not funny. I like to think that I’m funny. I tell jokes. I often get the punchline wrong or my timing is off, but I tell them. Unfortunately, I’m usually the only one laughing. But does my solitary laughter stop me? Oh, no. It never does. I just keep right on . . . telling jokes and laughing by myself. My second confession? I do this in a classroom.
Usually, telling badly phrased jokes and laughing by myself is OK. Students will give the fake three-toned laugh, “ha, ha, ha.” You know, the one that actually says, “you-are-not-funny,-but-you-grade-my-work-so-I-have-to-play-along” laugh. It works in the classroom, though. Telling jokes badly becomes my shtick. I know I’m not funny and they know I’m not funny. We revel in our my delusion of someday having my own comedy show. While my bad attempt at humor can seem ill-advised, it is a calculated strategy at openness and authenticity.
Humor has a place in today’s college classroom. It has a place in pedagogy, as it aids in student learning. That is, it aids in student learning when it’s authentic, not contrived, not forced. Humor can help students relax in a classroom setting, particularly if they are fearful or insecure in their ability to master the material of a course. Writing classes or mathematics courses can be examples of classes that students dread. Timely and appropriate humor can help students see their professors as authentic and approachable.
Humor has a “humanizing effect on the image of an instructor,” according to John Huss, at Northern Kentucky University. It’s no secret that I am a Springsteen fanatic fan. I make jokes about Springsteen in class. As students warm up to me and to my method of instruction, they begin making Springsteen jokes, too. (Actually, their jokes are not funny in the slightest, as the students’ jokes tend to disparage the god of rock “The Boss” as being past his prime, but in the spirit of fair play and keeping student learning at the center of my pedagogy, I laugh.)
I have a million just like that.
These silly, stupid jokes help us form a community in the classroom. We have shared knowledge. We belong. Together we draw comparisons between what we are doing in class and what’s happening in the world. Sometimes those comparisons are very strange, and we laugh. But the students remember.
How about you? How do you use humor in your classes? How has it affected student learning? Please leave comments below.
Oh, and my joke? I only know one. Here goes:
–Why are there so many Smiths in the phone book?
–Because they all have telephones!
[Image of "Laughing Star" by Flickr user cindy47452. Licensed under Creative Commons.]
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13 Responses to Humor in the Classroom
Jason B. Jones - January 26, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I make a distinction between professors who are funny, and ones who are professor-funny: http://www.jbj.wordherders.net/2009/07/18/professor-funny/
The distinction hangs, to some extent, on being willing to laugh at oneself, which seems to be harder than one would expect. But professors who are never the butt of their own jokes are less likely to find their students to be forgiving if humor ever goes awry.
Nels P. Highberg - January 26, 2010 at 9:31 pm
I’m always surprised when I throw out some sarcastic comment and people start laughing. I do not think of myself as funny at all, but I apparently have some random moments now and then.
Brian Croxall - January 26, 2010 at 9:11 pm
One of the ways that I use humor is by sketching on the board. In a way similar to Billie’s joke-telling, I cannot draw to save my life. And the students know it. But it’s something that we can all laugh over as I’m sketching an amoeba and telling us all that it’s the United States.
I think I’m okay at telling a joke in the classroom–although it is frequently tied to pop culture references–but I’m more than willing to accept that I’m probably more professor-funny than anything else.
Julie Meloni - January 26, 2010 at 9:52 pm
i can honestly say that I think I have a humor-centered pedagogy. I can’t imagine a class without it.
God, I hope I’m actually funny.
Horace - January 26, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I do focus a fair amount of effort on humor, but am frequently the butt of my own jokes, in the way that Jason distinguishes above. In fact, I occasionally go the physical humor route, (usually) stopping just short of pratfalls. Jazz-hands, though, are always funny.
The thing is, that this does offset some elements of my pedagogy (like my inflexible unwillingness to “grade leniently”) and needs to be offset by others (like a need to dress comparatively formally in the classroom).
This combination–hard-ass grader, commitment to high-level of discourse (today: Jameson on pastiche in the 200-level classroom), suit-and-tie, shuffle-off-to-Buffalo–wouldn’t work for many people, and it doesn’t always work for me either. But the key is that the element of humor, liberally but carefully applied, lets me be the kind of professor who might normally be despised.
Joanna - January 26, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I crack jokes all the time–it makes my teenage child roll her eyes, and I’m sure some of my students do as well. But it also seems to give them license to relax a little too.
Ammon Allred - January 26, 2010 at 10:24 pm
I’ve discovered that I love recording lectures because as my wife says, nobody else loves my jokes quite as much as I do.
I have to say that the greatest experience I’ve had with humor in the classroom was certainly a laugh at myself, jokes on me joke. I was teaching an existentialism class where the dynamic had developed that I would often end a line of thought with what I felt was a humorous aside. There would be silence as the students frantically scribbled in their notebooks, and then I’d say “that was supposed to be a joke” and they’d politely laugh.
So, I’m teaching Nietzsche and in the course of talking about the idea of the “hatred of the body” I say something to the effect of “Americans might think that they love their bodies, but they really hate them.” It’s the end of a train of thought and so I stop. Students continue to furiously scribble in their notebooks. Then I say very seriously, “I’m not joking.” Students begin to laugh uproariously, and genuinely.
Thing is, I wasn’t joking.
Then there’s the broad, again unintentionally funny, humor. For example, walking into a classroom with a full cup of coffee, forgetting you’re holding the cup of coffee and gesticulating while lecturing, causing coffee to spill all over yourself. I’ve done that too.
Ammon Allred - January 26, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Oh and one more aside — here’s one of the things that has made me know most concretely that I’ve been really helped someone learn.
I’m an avid fan of the first 6 seasons of the Simpsons, I tolerated the next 2 and I loathe the last 20 or god knows how many more seasons since then — so the Simpsons often end up peppering my examples.
So a former student in a philosophy of law class who is now in law school recently wrote on my facebook wall
“So I covered Holmes’s “bad man”, Ely, Fuller and Dworkin all on the same day, and some how in my mind they all turn into Simpsons references.”
Meagan - January 26, 2010 at 11:06 pm
I’ve always tried to incorporate some levity into my classrooms. I find it enhances the sense of community that fosters better peer workshop discussions.
I’m just now becoming at ease with making my age a topic of humor. I’m 35 now, but I first started teaching college when I was 24. I was almost a peer then. I’m clearly of a different generation now, though. (For instance, I brought up filmstrips in class the other day and got a bunch of blank stares in return.)
It’s a narrow line to walk, though, because I don’t want to invite too much chortling at the expense of instructional/conversational time.
joanna - January 27, 2010 at 7:24 am
I am funny by nature and have had to learn when NOT to deploy it in the classroom. Not that I began my career by driving into the classroom on a tricycle, or being scaldingly sarcastic–instead, I’ve learned to tone it down whenever I’ve become more of an entertainer than teacher, or used humor at a level that the class just doesn’t get, which only makes me look odd, not funny.
Horace - January 27, 2010 at 11:16 am
An important point, Joanna. I do think that we walk a fine line between humor as a tool and something more like edutainment, esp. when we begin to conflate student laughs with better course evals (and there is a correlation, I suspect). I also think we have to be careful about using humor in a way that re-centers classroom focus back on ourselves, rather than on student learning.
I learned this the hard way when one of my favorite students, after her third class with me, said, “You’re a really great prof, but you’ve got to admit you’re kind of vain.” Since then, I’ve tried to be reall cognizant of the line between humor as a learning tool, and humor as vanity.
Jeff Lang - January 27, 2010 at 1:10 pm
First of all, what an excellent image!
There’s definitely a line between bad humor that’s good and plain-old bad humor. I agree with the point that a little self effacing humor can bring levity to a difficult subject and build a personal connection between students and professor. However, I can think of at least two professors I’ve had who took it too far.
One had a set of running jokes that simply wasn’t funny. It’s one thing to try a joke and have it bomb. Anyone who’s done any public speaking has been in that situation and you just move on, but incorporating a bad joke as a recurring theme can really have an effect your ability to hold people’s attention. When that joke analogy comes up for the 5th time, people may just tune you out and then it can be hard to regain their interest.
The other made their jokes too personal. First, personal jokes about class members have the potential to hurt feelings. Some students will never admits that your quip cut too deep and may even participate by throwing a jab of their own but you run the risk of escalating the joke beyond the acceptable level. Also, other students in the class may feel like outsiders. As you have your tete-a-tete with the popular kids, the rest of the class will be waiting for you to return to the lesson at hand.
Of course, humor (like beauty) is in the eye of the beholder so keep your jokes quick and above the belt to make sure they have the greatest effect.
Tria - January 27, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Nels, those of us who know you personally know that you are truly and wonderfully perceptively funny.