Confessions of a Former School-Teacher, Part 5

Rule #6: Laugh Often
I have so many good memories of just outright silly things with my classes. Some things became class jokes after awhile. With my sixth graders, we would try to weird each other out with extreme weather events (It is possible for it to rain spiders, like my worst nightmare-they're actually picked up by wind and then redeposited during a storm, but same dif.)! With my Freshman class, we laughed about the stupidity of the textbook sometimes, and though very, very dry-the magnetism unit was always a favorite when we read the advice on re-magnetizing an item: "just stroke it... with a magnet,"-think immature, adolescent boys, and your mind will be in the appropriate place! I'm also fairly certain that there is still a video of me on FaceBook somewhere of me doing zumba-esque moves, singing, as I shook up homemade ice cream in a baggie. In Biology it was a riot when a favorite, popular boy student mispronounced organism as orgasm, and then couldn't get it right after that!  My Freshman health class was a blast to joke with when we played my own version of the Game of Life and gave them bizarre financial emergencies- "your new puppy ate your couch and your carpet, and your parents are visiting next week!" Or how about the fantastic Health book and it's outdated pictures and weird quotes, "Uncontrolled bleeding could lead to death." No, really?  Who could forget Testosteroni- the San Francisco Treat, when we talked about Testosterone in Anatomy, and I said it sounded like rice-a-roni to me, and that I remembered it by thinking Testosteroni!! Or my favorite ever textbook quote, "Old age culminates in death." You think?

Anatomy was a class unto its own when it came to uncomfortable, and sometimes slightly inappropriate jokes. After-all, we were learning all about the human body. I will never forget my first anatomy class that made me laugh until I cried, at least once a week. My favorite story is one of a girl who insisted weird pregnancies could happen. To her defense, we had not studied the reproductive system yet, but every eye turned and looked at her like she was an alien when she spouted, "Well, you don't need a uterus to have a baby." Ummm....yeah, you kinda do.

Some major teaching foibles that still kind of make me cringe. First year teaching, learning about metric measurements I used COPS as an analogy for differences in mass- "So when the cops find a kilo of cocaine..."-yeah, I was teaching 3rd graders at the time. Or the reading comprehension question that was set up to make me fail-a story about a squirrel hiding nuts. "So, what did the squirrel do with his nuts?" -oh my, was I red, and laughing, and my TA was about to fall out of her desk-but luckily only the boys got that one! Or my own personal favorite about a fellow teacher that the staff was having a wedding shower for-"So, I get to go to Mr. Z's shower today. That's kind of exciting." Student looks at me funny, followed by raising of the hand and then, "You're having a shower together?" Me, totally not getting it, "Oh, yes, all of the teachers are going to the shower together after school." Pause. "Oh!  It's a party- we aren't all taking a shower together!" Wow. Again, when I taught younger kids.

Sometimes jokes were a bit off-humor; sometimes teacher was a lot off topic. We had fun though. Laughter was a norm in my classroom. Oftentimes the laughter was aimed at me for something dumb I had done or said, and I was totally okay with that. This rule? Be comfortable enough to laugh at yourself-often.