My students provide an endless source of amusement each day as a teacher, as do my own children. High school students are always cracking jokes and playing pranks on each other. It begins at 8:00 in the morning and continues until the end of the day.

I spend the first five to ten minutes of class cracking my own jokes, sometimes to a very tired irritable audience who doesn’t appreciate them a lot of the time, but it is my way.

I used to think about becoming a standup comedian when I was younger and figured teaching would be a good place to try that. Twenty-years later, it has become my calling card. My students expect me to at least try to make them laugh. I often get comments at the end of the year that they appreciated my jokes, but did not want to laugh super hard in class, which makes me feel better about it, but teaching is a very human activity. It very much is dependent on the relationship building that goes on between student and teacher. When students think a teacher is funny, they tend to learn more and feel safer in the classroom taking risks.

Oftentimes, they go too far with their own jokes and must be reigned in, but it creates and atmosphere that is pleasant and light-hearted so that when mistakes happen, or bad things occur, everyone feels like there is a bit of an unspoken bond. I have definitely had to learn to not take myself as seriously as a high school teacher. I used to take offense at many things, but have learned it is usually better to roll with the punches a bit, they try to fight every battle. There is always tomorrow and different ways to approach creating an ideal working environment.

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