Bringing more humor to your classroom can have a strong impact on classroom management.
Because it makes building rapport and influence easier.
It improves listening and the desire to pay attention.
It draws students to you, makes you more likable, and helps create an environment they enjoy being part of.
—Which is the secret to making your classroom management plan matter to them.
But lately I’ve been hearing from teachers struggling to make it work. They try to be funny. They try to tell jokes and do impressions or silly dances.
But too often it falls on deaf ears. It’s unappreciated or met with silence. In some cases, it’s even made fun of.
So what’s the deal? Why are some teachers able to effortlessly share a laugh with students while others find the experience difficult, humiliating, or not worth the effort?
Well, it’s not you.
Although there will always be teachers with a particular knack for it, there is nothing wrong with your sense of humor. You have it in you right now and just as you are to have more fun with your class—no matter your grade level.
No, it’s something else, something easier to fix with a bit of reflection and a few tweaks in your understanding of how humor works best in the classroom.
What follows are three reasons why you may be struggling in this area and how you can turn it around to build stronger and more influential relationships with your students.
1. You try too hard.
Any endeavor that includes performing in front of others—whether on stage, on a playing field, or in the classroom—is negatively affected by trying too hard.
If you care too much and overthink it, you’ll lose your spontaneity. You’ll lose your timing and playfulness, your cleverness and quirkiness. You’ll lose your authentic personality.
In other words, you’ll lose the ingredients that make you interesting and amusing to students.
The solution is to never try to be funny. Instead, just be open to laughter. Just be willing and present, and the opportunities for a witty comment or anecdote (or silly dance move) will magically appear.
A classroom is a target-rich environment and by simply being aware and open-minded, what to say or do at the right moment will come to you without conscious thought.
2. You plan to be funny.
This is probably the most common mistake. I’ve heard from teachers who rehearse stories, consult joke books, and try to manufacture laughs like paint-by-numbers art.
But even professional comedians have to spend months, sometimes years, on their material, working out the perfect timing, pacing, and word choice just to get a reliable laugh.
They also practice their craft exhaustively to appear natural. It’s a hard-fought process that you don’t have time for, and thus, it rarely works.
So don’t plan—at least beyond a vague idea. Don’t try to “think up” something funny. Instead, trust the natural charisma, cleverness, and humor you have in abundance inside you.
You’ll be amazed at what comes to you when you say no to planning and yes to the moment.
3. You try to be someone you’re not.
Here at SCM, we’ve talked a lot about how important it is to embrace your nerdy, weird, and wonderful self. Nothing is more effective at building rapport than being you.
When you try to be cool or speak to students on their level, using their lingo, attitudes, or sensibilities, it never works.
It’s awkward and confusing and sends the message that you’re trying to be their friend—which is an SCM no-no.
Instead, just do you, no matter how eccentric you think others may perceive you. The truth is, students love and admire this trait in teachers. We love it in our friends and favorite people.
So don’t change for nothin’ for nobody. Just be you.
Enjoy Your Students
One of the tenets of improvisational comedy, which is the true secret to bringing more humor to your classroom, is to not try to be funny.
The reason is that if you just pay attention, if you just be in the moment and aware of what’s going on around you, funny becomes obvious.
So get out of your head. Take the pressure off. Don’t try, don’t plan, and don’t be anyone but you. And don’t feel like you have to be hilarious or even amusing very much of the time.
Just focus on enjoying your students and the laughs, the easy rapport, the likability, the love of being in your class . . .
Will happen naturally.
PS – If you’d like to read about some of the silly things I’ve done in the classroom to get a laugh, check out the last chapter in Dream Class.
Also, if you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.
Although I don’t think I am funny the kids say I am. When I ask why, they say that I have the best facial expressions.
Same here Sue! They love my expressions when I am being my authentic self.
Hear, hear!
Being able to laugh at my own mistakes usally helps break in a new class at the start of the semester. And if a group laughs at me instead of with me, I laugh anyway and say something like, “Yea, that was pretty lame, I need to work on that one.” Eventually I win them over. Resistance to an old science teacher’s humor is futile.
Well expressed Michael. Humour and jokes are two entirely different things. Humour is situational and spontaneous; it takes place as the situation arises and does not put any one down. Jokes almost always have a target and often put people on the spot and make them feel uncomfortable.
As a teacher of French, in Canada, my many gestures to convey meaning without resorting to direct translation often elicit smiles and laughter.
Thanks Helene!
Thank your for another great post!
Corny jokes, content puns, and situational humor seem to get the most lighthearted responses in my room. Even if they think you are not funny, many will still laugh or give you the “ba-dum-dum” joke ending. The less cool you try to be the better. What a relief!I
Let the kids make each other laugh by asking them to write silly songs or skits to review or teach. This creates to lots of opportunities for situational humor, too.
My pleasure, Val!
I usually do the just checking to see if you are awake deal when I make a mistake which works in a regular ed classroom but not with SCD students I teach now.
With this class, I act like I’m not sure of an answer or how do you make that number for ex. 15 — 51?? then I will show them a 12 or 21 and they just smile and NO 15 and so I will finally find the correct number and they think I am so silly.
But it’s not an everyday occurrence because my students are usually in charge of the calendar stuff each day — I just fill in when help is needed.
So, my silly is occasional not daily.
I developed an art of being humorous while maintaining a serious demeanor in class. I’ve had students tell me I’m hilarious, and keep in mind, I hardly ever smile during class. How is this possible? Like Nike commercials used to say, I “just do it”. Mr. Linsin is absolutely correct. Do not ever plan to be funny. If you’re weird and eccentric in your personal life, just be that way in the classroom while maintaining your professional composure. You do not have to make it obvious. How can I be the most serious teacher and yet have several students mimicking my gestures and sayings even in other teacher’s classes? I just am who I am. The best part of being serious is even if jokes or gestures fall flat, it can always be played off as it wasn’t supposed to be funny anyway. Google the comedian Steven Wright and that’s my persona in the classroom most of the time. The best teachers and professors I ever had were always the ones who could be serious and hilarious at the same time.
Thanks for sharing, Pete. Just the thought of Steven Wright in the classroom makes me laugh.
Mr. Linsin,
You are one of the many reasons I look forward to Saturdays!!
Thanks Pete!
I think humor is an effective tool in a classroom where the teacher is valued by the students in some other way. It’s meant to complement.
My concern is not being able to make the kids laugh at the silliness that I want to share with them. We have a great connection, and they respond to humor appropriately…but sometimes with more exuberance than is desired. I have to reel them in quickly, or they lose focus… Can you address this issue in a future post? thank you.
Will do, Terri.
I’ve had a similar experience to Terri’s, but I think I know why that happens in my case.
In my case, it’s a thin line between being a teacher who’s being clownish and becoming a clown who’s trying to teach. What I mean is, I tend to get carried away with the humor almost without realizing it. Because I know that I am this way, I restrain myself a little. Instead of telling three jokes, I tell one. Instead of ‘juicing’ the humor for all it’s worth, I ‘juice’ it long enough to engage the class and then continue with the lesson. That’s just been my experience. I must also admit that I don’t always catch myself when I’m getting carried away, but I try and I think I’m getting better at it.
Excellent post. Humor is one of life’s greatest gifts and is how I get through tough days and easy days alike!
One reason I have seen for humor failing is when it is mean-spirited. It’s not as easy as “don’t use sarcasm with students”, but something about the heart behind the humor. As a matter of fact, one of the best teachers I ever had was my junior high art teacher, who was hilariously sarcastic, but NEVER mean-spirited. I distinctly remember (from 40 years ago!) him, after looking at a piece of artwork, saying to a student, “Michael, you bring new meaning to the word mediocre.” The reason why it wasn’t mean was that Michael and everyone else in the class knew our teacher really cared for us and was NOT serious.
Unfortunately, many teachers couch their unkind feelings toward challenging students in sarcastic “humor” that’s anything but funny.
As an English teacher, I love how silly language can be when we make minor mistakes. There are so many pitfalls of misspelling, mispronouncing, or forgotten punctuation that change the meaning to something ludicrous, and I love to giggle about them when I find them. But learning all those details is difficult for students, and I don’t want them to feel laughed at in my classroom. I try to start the year by demonstrating the silliness of language with examples from the internet rather than the class, but I still have trouble encouraging students to laugh at themselves when they make mistakes. Do you have any advice for encouraging students to be more lighthearted with their mistakes?
This is a very useful article, indeed for me, as I have sometimes had trouble integrating use of humour with the focus of smart classroom management on calmness and sticking to the plan. Articles like this are very helpful. What also helped me with your writing in your book, inspire, about how my job as a teacher was to do my best performance in front of the class, speaking, in funny voices, modelling, teaching in detail, letting my passion, and, yes, my humour shine through. Thank you, Michael!