Special Replay: Teaching With Laughter

Teaching With Laughter – Special Replay!

Just thinking about teaching with laughter makes me smile. I stumbled across this recently when I tried this technique first-hand. It worked! I can’t wait to share the details with you.

We all love to laugh. Often we read things on social media that are so funny we share them with our friends. Laughter makes us happy, it reduces stress. Laughter crosses culture, all over the world people laugh. Babies even laugh before they can speak. It is a form of communication.

Teaching with Laughter has benefits!

Research shows that that laughter:

Increases blood flow
Decreases stress
Triggers endorphins
Promotes well-being

The use of humor in an education setting is beneficial and I found this out the other day. When I was working on a reading program, I found my student (aka grandson) was becoming stressed. We were pushing it to right under his frustration level in order to create new neuro-pathways. This is one of the ways to teach a child who may struggle in a specific area. We don’t want the child frustrated, so it is under this frustration level where a child will say it is too hard.

I decided to use humor to defuse the tension so I began with all the jokes I had on hand – believe me, I’m not the best teller of jokes.

What time is it when the elephant sits on a fence? (Time for a new fence)
Why did the man throw the clock out the window? (To see time fly) etc.

It was wonderful – he began telling me jokes and we laughed, went back to our work and they were able to get a bunch done!

Telling jokes or teaching using humorous antidotes does encourage a healthy learning environment. While humor in itself does not cause learning it does affect the brain. It causes the brain condition to fire up and get ready for learning.

You may not be a comedian – very rarely do our own kids think we are funny; we can use humor as a tool.