Ways to Spice Up Your Classes

[avaya]

In case you haven't seen this before ....  My guess is that we can come up with many, many more.  Any takers?  If you want to add some, please number them, starting with 51.

BTW, my favorites are 5, 19, 20, and 37.

50 Fun Things for Professors to Do on the First Day of Class

1. Wear a hood with one eyehole. Periodically make strange gurgling noises.

2. After confirming everyone's names on the roll, thank the class for attending "Advanced Astrodynamics 690" and mention that yesterday was the last day to drop.

3. After turning on the overhead projector, clutch your chest and scream "MY  PACEMAKER!"

4. Wear a pointed Kaiser helmet and a monocle and carry a riding crop.

5. Gradually speak softer and softer and then suddenly point to a student and scream "YOU! WHAT DID I JUST SAY?"

6. Deliver your lecture through a hand puppet. If a student asks you a question directly, say in a high-pitched voice, "The Professor can't hear you, you'll have to ask *me*, Winky Willy."

7. If someone asks a question, walk silently over to their seat, hand them your piece of chalk, and ask, "Would YOU like to give the lecture, Mr. Smartypants?"

8. Pick out random students, ask them questions, and time their responses with a stop watch. Record their times in your grade book while muttering "tsk, tsk."

9. Ask students to call you "Tinkerbell" or "Surfin' Bird."

10. Stop in mid-lecture, frown for a moment, and then ask the class whether your butt looks fat.

11. Play "Kumbaya" on the banjo.

12. Show a video on medieval torture implements to your calculus class. Giggle throughout it.

13. Announce "you'll need thisl," and write the suicide prevention hotline number on the board.

14. Wear mirrored sunglasses and speak only in Turkish. Ignore all questions.

15. Start the lecture by dancing and lip-syncing to James Brown's "Sex Machine."

16. Ask occassional questions, but mutter "as if you gibbering simps would know" and move on before anyone can answer.

17. Ask the class to read Jenkins through Johnson of the local phone book by the next lecture. Vaguely imply that there will be a quiz.

18. Have one of your graduate students sprinkle flower petals ahead of you as you pace back and forth.

19. Address students as "worm."

20. Announce to students that their entire grades will be based on a single-question oral final exam. Imply that this could happen at any moment.

21. Turn off the lights, play a tape of crickets chirping, and begin singing spirituals.

22. Ask for a volunteer for a demonstration. Ask them to fill out a waiver as you put on a lead apron and light a blowtorch.

23. Point the overhead projector at the class. Demand each student's name, rank, and serial number.

24. Begin class by smashing the neck off a bottle of vodka, and announce that the lecture's over when the bottle's done.

25. Have a band waiting in the corner of the room. When anyone asks a question, have the band start playing and sing an Elvis song.

26. Every so often, freeze in mid sentence and stare off into space for several minutes. After a long, awkward silence, resume your sentence and proceed normally.

27. Wear a "virtual reality" helmet and strange gloves.  When someone asks a question, turn in their direction and make throttling motions with your hands.

28. Mention in passing that you're wearing rubber underwear.

29. Growl constantly and address students as "matey."

30. Devote your math lecture to free verse about your favorite numbers and ask students to "sit back and groove."

31. Announce that last year's students have almost finished their class projects.

32. Inform your English class that they need to know Fortran and code all their essays. Deliver a lecture on output format statements.

33. Bring a small dog to class. Tell the class he's named "Boogers McGee" and is your "mascot." Whenever someone asks a question, walk over to the dog and ask it, "What'll be, McGee?"

34. Wear a feather boa and ask students to call you "Snuggles."

35. Tell your math students that they must do all their work in a base 11 number system. Use a complicated symbol you've named after yourself in place of the number 10 and threaten to fail students who don't use it.

36. Claim to be a chicken. Squat, cluck, and produce eggs at irregular intervals.

37. Bring a CPR dummy to class and announce that it will be the teaching assistant for the semester. Assign it an office and office hours.

38. Have a grad student in a black beret pluck at a bass while you lecture.

39. Sprint from the room in a panic if you hear sirens outside.

40. Give an opening monologue. Take two minute "commercial breaks" every ten minutes.

41. Tell students that you'll fail them if they cheat on exams or "fake the funk."

42. Announce that you need to deliver two lectures that day, and deliver them in rapid-fire auctioneer style.

43. Pass out dental floss to students and devote the lecture to oral hygiene.

44. Announce that the entire 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica will be required reading for your class. Assign a report on Volume 1, Aardvark through Armenia, for next class.

45. Ask students to list their favorite showtunes on a signup sheet. Criticize their choices and make notes in your grade book.

46. Sneeze on students in the front row and wipe your nose on your shirt.

47. Warn students that they should bring a sack lunch to exams.

48. Refer frequently to students who died while taking your class.

49. Show up to lecture in a ventilated clean suit. Advise students to keep their distance for their own safety and mutter something about "that bug I picked up in the field."

50. Jog into class, rip the textbook in half, and scream,
     "Are you pumped?
     ARE YOU PUMPED? I CAN'T HEEEEEEAR YOU!"

Please number additions starting from 51.

[taciturn]

51. Take off your shirt the moment you enter the classroom. Instruct the students puzzled by the smilie you have drawn onto your belly to "pat it". Look limitlessly pleased when they do so.

52. Wear white satin gloves, touch your temples and whisper "I am sensing disharmonious energies" whenever a hand is raised. Agitatedly hush any attempts at talk.

[gennimom]

53. Go to class wearing a white cotton glove on one hand and a carrot on a string around your neck.


No, wait, I had a professor who did this.

[taciturn]

54. Stop mid-way through the opening lecture, look up, burp, perform a circular motion above your belly and say "I'm sorry -- I'm digesting my vegan burrito." Make all students bring own incense sticks to class. Spend approx. 45% of lecture time discussing the medical benefits of marijuana.

[see_wolf]

I have never seen this before – it’s hilarious!

I have done #37… but I teach First Aid/CPR… it’s still funny though!

[eumaios]

55. If you're male, come to class wearing a lime-green jumpsuit with a wide fur collar (also green), white platform shoes, and a huge gold sphynx medallion. Talk about "how pleasurable it is to take a good, healty sh*t."
Oh, wait--one of my professors did that.

56. Begin logic class with a fifteen-minute description of your kid's exploits in yesterday's Little League game.
Oops--that, too, really happened. Often.

57. Return the homework with hints and corrections written in various Asian languages that none of the students can read.
Sorry--another real case.

58. Start the first class of the semester by lighting a cigarette. Light a second cigarette from the first, and a third from the second. Make a lot of wild gestures so that you scatter ashes over students sitting in the front row. Stop in mid-sentence to describe yourself as "a ferocious smoker" and say, "If my smoking bothers you, you might want to change majors."
Oh, yeah--that was a department head.

59. Teach Milton's Paradise Lost as a divinely inspired text and require students to treat it not as a work of 17th-century literature but as the most recently composed book of the Bible. Dismiss suggestions that the voice of John Milton is anything but the voice of God.
Wait a minute--that was a real class.

60. Come to class wasted on prescription pain killers. Slouch against the blackboard while mumbling about the government's imbecility in not adopting your contingency plans for the invasion of various countries. Drool on your necktie while you mumble. Pause, try to get your eyes to focus on something, and then berate your students for their stupidity and laziness; be sure to use the word "morons" several times. Pause again, drool a little more, and then begin a diatribe anent feminists, denouncing them as the causes of impotence and male homosexuality. Without pausing, slide into a disjointed five-minute lecture on Steinbeck in which you dismiss all of his work as "second-rate pop Leninism." Turn the class loose with a contemptuous wave and a warning that everyone had better know Steinbeck by heart to pass the exam.
Darn--another real example from one of my classes.

61. Pause to chuckle a few times as your gleefully describe how you got the school board to fire your son's third-grade teacher because you suspected that the teacher was gay.
Oops--I sat through that lecture.

62. Refer to African-Americans with the n-word and tell the class that you're allowed to say it because you're black.
Yep--another true example.

63. On the first day, tell your students not to bother coming to class on rainy days because you're afraid to drive in the rain.
That's right--I had that teacher, too.

Drat. I just can't think of anything as amusing and eccentric as the madness and nonsense I heard from some of my professors.

[rizzy]

64. Come to class wearing dracula fangs and a cape.  Announce in Bella Legosi like voice: "I bid you welcome."  Optional accessory: coffin from which you rise up as if from a long sleep.

[gennimom]

Um, isn't that supposed to be 64?

[oldassocprof]

65.  When no grad students sign up for your seminars, offer to take on the department's grad student teaching seminar.  Change it to a 1950s oriented theory course, reading Homans, Durkheim, and mui sociobiologists.  Lock students in for the full three hours, and, if one asks you a question, scream that their ideas are "bulls***." 

66.  Teach a qualitative seminar where you rail against "positivsts."  Make the quantitatively oriented grad students "crash test dummies" for hyper-qualitative and postmodernist ideas.  Use anger and screaming liberally.

67.  Teach a seminar by invitation where you lure in all the department's grad students.  Force them to read the utterly worthless pre-postmodernist book you wrote while you were in repeated DTs as few years ago while you were gradually kicking alcohol.  (The book should be irritatingly whimsical and "cute," playing off the idea that everything is "constructed" through language-- [how original!])  If one or two of the students depart from your mandated paradigm in their final papers, give them an F without any explanation.

[dept_geek]

68. Wear all black on exam day. When you catch a student's eye as they are "thinking" laugh hysterically. A cackle, if you can. Then get a very serious look on your face. Scowl. Repeat as needed.

oh - wait. I had a professor who did this.

[teeban]

69. Write the number 69 on the board. Turn slowly to face the class while smiling suggestively and then ask, "Who wants to earn an A, right here, right now?"

[avaya]

69. Write the number 69 on the board. Turn slowly to face the class while smiling suggestively and then ask, "Who wants to earn an A, right here, right now?"

I LOVE IT!!!

Spork, where are you?!?

[drsyn]

70.  Talk repeatedly about your dear departed mother and the years you spent in seminary school.  Tell the class that one of your students said you were anal and ask, "What does that mean?"

[au_fait]

70.  Talk repeatedly about your dear departed mother and the years you spent in seminary school.  Tell the class that one of your students said you were anal and ask, "What does that mean?"

spew shield!

lol

[spork]

69. Write the number 69 on the board. Turn slowly to face the class while smiling suggestively and then ask, "Who wants to earn an A, right here, right now?"

I LOVE IT!!!

Spork, where are you?!?

You rang?