Getting a connection with a young person is imperative if you want to have any kind of influence in their life. Humor is a great way to keep things light while still dealing with real issues.
In my classroom the success of a student is directly related to how well I can connect to them. It is especially important for students who feel detached from education and from the education system. If I can use humor to break through the walls they have put up, I can usually get the connection needed for their success.
When you are teaching, in a classroom or just in life, you are asking kids to change the way they think, do things they've never done before, and push their boundaries. If that gets too intense, they often just give up. Humor helps lighten things up and make people happier (and happy people are much easier to teach than grumpy, negative people).
I use humor when I'm tired of asking a student to do the same thing a hundred times. Asking them in a humorous way makes them listen because it's not the same old thing they've been tuning out forever. It keeps me from having to be a nag and gets the whole class involved in a sort of positive peer pressure.
Humor also combats fear. You have to be willing to laugh at yourself and let them see that you make mistakes and that it doesn't stop you from moving on. It combats fear (of failure, looking dumb, making mistakes, being laughed at, etc) and it is comforting to know that other people aren't going to take every little thing too seriously.
For more humor resources on social issues click here.
Rebekah Engle is a teacher in an alternative high school. She is very involved in her community and writes a local blog called Look What's Happening in Salem.
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