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Best Practices: Workshops on Using Humor in TeachingTeachers are intrigued by humor - what a perfect topic for a faculty forum or an in-service training! At the University of New Mexico, I have used a workshop format for talking about humor. A natural follow-up to a humor and teaching workshop is the developing of teaching techniques that promote humor. These ideas and practices can then be shared at a faculty gathering. There can be prizes for the wittiest examples. And getting faculty together both to have a good time with each other and to learn something might be a great experience that can continue in classrooms with students. I think it's important to have students take part in developing humorous materials that coincide with the course content. And students appreciate the invitation to do so. Several formats can be adapted to different courses. For example, a teacher might ask students to create a list of "top ten proofs that History 106 improves your quality of life" or to complete the sentence "You know you're a Republican (math major, journalist, etc.) if ...." Another strategy is to ask students to design a bumper sticker that promotes the content of the course. In my mediation course, one of the stickers read "mediators do it together." Another verse strategy might be to create limericks about concepts covered in the course. --- Jean Civikly-Powell |
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