Do you remember being a student in school? Do you remember how shocked you were when you found out that your teacher was a real human? Maybe you bumped into her/him at the grocery store, church or many of the other places you frequented in your community and it made you do a double take. I remember the “shock ‘n awe” of the first time I saw one of my teachers outside the four walls. While I don’t remember where I was or even how old I was, I remember thinking it strange that my teacher would leave the school. Yes, I know it’s something that many (if not all) kids think early on in life, but ask yourself this, what do your students really know about you after the final bell rings? Maybe an even more important question, what pieces of the “after the final bell” you are you leaving outside of school that ought to be incorporated into your role at school?
I love to laugh. It’s not just the best medicine, Mayo Clinic has a great article on all the stress relief benefits your body can get from laughing. It’s also the first thing I wanted every student I ever taught to know about me. It’s what made me “me” and prevented that stereotype of the teacher who sleeps under his desk. But laughter is one the biggest elements that I see growing more and more absent in our work as educators today. We spend too much time fretting about standards, standardized tests, getting grades in the gradebook and making sure we’ve got that teacher input sheet turned in for the ARD on Wednesday. Yes, each of those things plays a role, but if you love to laugh the way I do, students need to know that about you. The best way to do that, bring the laughter to your classroom or campus. In my never ending quest for laughter I came across an Instagram posting for a restaurant in Austin, TX named El Arroyo. I’ve never eaten there so if you’re looking for a recommendation that’s going to be on a different blog. While many of the signs are more adult in nature, quite a few of the school appropriate ones would have found their way into my classroom, particularly as pieces of a warm-up or as my hook for starting a new unit. If I were a science teacher, the picture below about the rotation of earth or the atom would become a warm-up question for me. I simply ask kids to write a paragraph about what makes that sign humorous. It’s science disguised in a funny sign, and it’s critical thinking. Kids are explaining the “why.” Do you teach social studies? Check out both the Caesar and German kids signs below. Discussing homophones in an ELA or ESL class? See the vegan sign below. Apply the same thing I described above to any of these pictures and bring the laughter and learning together. Not having a classroom now, you can rest assured that these will find there way into a staff meeting, professional development session or any other way I can think of to work them in. Why? Because I know the staff and students at my school love laughter. When we share a laugh, not only is a bond formed, we see each other equal partners working toward the same cause, not as the king and his royal subjects. Enjoy the signs below, and in the words of that great philosopher Han Solo: “Laugh it up, Fuzzball!”
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AuthorJeff Lahey Archives
January 2020
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