This week's @steemiteducation homework assignment asked the community to share "the funniest classroom experience you have ever had". Although I have written about a few of these already, one of my favorite parts of my job is the fact that working with teenagers provides me with new amusing stories nearly every day. This is especially true when you have a certain "interesting" teaching style.
Just like Major League Baseball managers, teachers have different styles for running their clubhouse (classroom). Some managers are incredibly serious. Others, like the Chicago Cubs' Joe Maddon, might bring in a surprise pregame petting zoo in order to keep his team "loose".
Be careful not to choke your flamingo too much Joe. You might go blind.
My teaching style is similar to Joe Maddon's managerial style. I like to keep my students "loose". School is hard work... especially if you do not learn like the "typical" learner. For many, it can be so stressful, that they lock up and are unable to learn or perform at their peak level.
Stress can be positive. Many people perform better if they feel a manageable amount of stress. In addition, stress is a reality of life. I would never want to completely eliminate stress in my classroom. I merely want it to be at the appropriate level and show kids how to manage it. Because laughter is a great way to relieve stress, we do that quite a bit in my classroom.
Most of the time, it's quite easy to illicit laughter in a classroom of a dozen teenagers (the real challenge is getting them to get serious afterwards... but this can be taught). The best laughter is that which is not planned.
For example, one time when I was teaching about the Renaissance, I projected an image of Michelangelo's David on the screen. I informed my students that I was lucky enough to see this masterpiece in person. I explained to them that I had always assumed that it was a regular life sized statue. However, when I saw it in person, I was blown away by how huge David was. He was simply gigantic. He was so big I couldn't believe it. I never imagined he would be so large.
I could have simply said that I was shocked that David was more than 14 feet tall...
but I didn't.
A word to the wise, if you are speaking to a room full of 15-year-olds, never use the words "huge", "gigantic", "big" or "large" while a giant image of a naked man is being projected behind you.
I have also learned that the use of some other words may lead to unintended consequences.
Recently, I had a conversation with my students about being on time for class. One of my classes starts right after the students' lunch period. One particular student was often tardy because he goes to the bathroom every day after lunch. This is actually fairly normal. The problem is, he does not hurry to get there. He hangs out and talks with his friends and then when they rush to class, he decides to go to the washroom. Because he is not the only one with issues being on time, we held a class meeting about the situation.
Quite often, I use a work place analogy to describe school and my classroom. I explain that the school is a student's place of business and they should conduct themselves as such. On my classroom door, I even have a poster of Yoda that reads "Act and dress like your place of business this is you will." (It takes a few minutes for kids to translate it... but it is worth it).
It is amazing how many inappropriate behaviors this can cover (especially when accompanied by appropriate consequences).
If I find a student swearing in the halls I can simply ask, "Is that the language you would use in front of your boss?"
If kids are horseplaying, a simple "What if I did that during your parent teacher conferences?" usually does the trick.
If teenagers are making out in the stairwell, I can horrify them with "Could you imagine if your teachers were doing that?"
Although I have had many of these "conduct yourself like this is your place of business" conversations while escorting students to the assistant principal's office, very rarely do I have to bust the same kid twice. No one wants to hear my "place of business" speech more than once.
Clearly she has heard my speech before.
Ok. Back to my class meeting.
I was incredibly serious. I began talking about the importance of being on time. I asked my students, "If you know that you have a business meeting every day at 11:30, are you going to show up late every day?"
After saying the word "business" at least 50 additional times, a student raised his hand. I called on him and he said,
"That's the problem. I need to 'take care of my business' after lunch. If I don't, I'll take care of that business in my pants."
Everyone in the class, including me, lost it.
Some may argue that the student was being disrespectful. I disagree. Based on the 6 months of rapport I have built with him and his classmates, he knew the point had been made and it was ok to break the tension.
Two good things happened as a result of that class meeting.
Incidents of students being late for class have decreased dramatically.
The entire class now refers to trips to the bathroom as "business meetings".
*If you would like to see the educational community continue to grow, please consider delegating SP to @steemiteducation.
We try so hard to instruct our children in all the right things―teaching good from bad, explaining choices and consequences―when in reality most lessons are learned through observation and experience. Perhaps we'd be better off training our youth to be highly observant.
Wow. That is a really great point. I wonder if I do that enough for my own children.
Citing the source since there are other great quotes: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/teaching-children
great post
Kids will always be kids just like boys wills always be boys.
Very
Very nice
So his business was so serious :)))
And anyway you made a sense of humor and good impact on their punctuality 👍
Anyway, I enjoy your ID anytime I see it :D han shot first!
I believe teaching students is a difficult challenge as you say it's very stressful but I have to say I am proud to have many teachers like yourself to put positive thoughts in children minds that's how they get a better education in their lives. As you say laughter relieves a lot of stress, in a long day in the classrooms. I truly enjoyed reading your article thank you so much for sharing going to upvote and resteem your post . Looking forward to your next post
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Thanks that is kind of you to say.
It's always a pleasure to read interesting articles and makes life a little bit more simple . thank you again for sharing. Looking forward to your next post @mannyfig1956
Your methods of teaching are simply awesome.
Stress can be positive. Many people perform better if they feel a manageable amount of stress. In addition, stress is a reality of life. I would never want to completely eliminate stress in my classroom. I merely want it to be at the appropriate level and show kids how to manage it. Because laughter is a great way to relieve stress, we do that quite a bit in my classroom.
Here I learned something, stress should be kept within limits, one shouldn't take hell of a stress, so that his brain will get crashed, neither we should take things for granted, we should be serious and take some stress, it's what life is.
A word to the wise, if you are speaking to a room full of 15-year-olds, never use the words "huge", "gigantic", "big" or "large" while a giant image of a naked man is being projected behind you.
We should not use these words in front of students less than 15 year's I agree on this, but tell me how can you show a naked man to 15 year old students?
I was incredibly serious. I began talking about the importance of being on time. I asked my students, "If you know that you have a business meeting every day at 11:30, are you going to show up late every day?"
Time management is a crucial thing, life is all about how we manage time.
Keep sharing such posts.
Thank you teacher for this awesome article.
I Think With so many students in classrooms these days, it's tempting for a teacher to simply let poor behavioral choices go and spend as much time as possible teaching the lesson. But in the long term, this is not the wisest choice. While there are behaviors that, while poor, are age-appropriate.
These teenagers need to be the boss. I mean They only feel important when they are the boss.
They definitely need to learn how to work for a boss.
Adults are always asking little kids what
they want to be when they grow up cause
they’re looking for ideas...........@hanshotfirst
I had this Philosophy professor that liked to Shock and Awe and I remember him giving us this whole list of book title as reading materials and that we had a week to finish reading all of it.
We expect that we would be reading a lot of materials but 15 books in one week and each were about 300-500 pages long and not to mention very expensive.
Yet we were first year college students and growing up not asking questions.
Some of the folks bought the books, some borrowed and on the third day some complained that it was not humanly possibly.
There it began that we should question and ask questions and not meekly accept things even if comes from a professor. That would be the start of our long life pursuit of knowledge and we have to thank him for it.
Had to laugh at this one.
Wow. That is a great lesson. Bet no one forgot that. Hopefully nobody spent their rent money on the books.
Bahahahahaha, business meetings. I love it. That is my favourite thing about my move from the Primary/junior division to intermediate. Grade 8 kids have a different level of understanding of everything and "Get" things that little kids don't. For example, last week after our basketball tournament I wrote an announcement celebrating the team's efforts. I like to write sports announcements that are like a sports report on the radio. The announcement included some great highlights from the games and players. Some specific highlights included this statement "Tommy contributed with some amazing cuts and driving down low to the hole for some sweet baskets."
Laughter broke out through the entire grade 8 hallway as our principal read this over the PA system. They had heard something in there that that was highly amusing to the brain of a 13 year old.
As soon as she walked out of the announcement room the VP walked up to her laughing and ask "So, driving the hole down low are we?" lol
The Principal totally asked if I set her up. lol. I said no, it was a sports report but what a great turn of events. She laughed about it. Too funny.
Oh yeah! Nothing is safe with our kids. But that is half the fun. Uh oh. I said "but".
Kids certainly say the dandliest things but they said their minds more and express themselves freely
This is very good post. Thank you so much for share.
I really like about post @hanshotfirst, and good luck always in teaching children, and I really like about your activities at home, and thank you for sharing information.
Gotta love teens! LOL
That is so damn hillarious.
Man, I can imagine how lucky those students are by this article...
You put your point, I learned something and I had fun doing it.
Isn't that the point of teaching.
I salute you sir
You are indeed a great teacher
thanks to the excellent post and its imformation, good job friends success continues
Haha. Amazing memes. man. Kids...
I rememeber syaing some stupid stuff myself when I was a kid
oh ,,,its really great post for kid,,,thanks for post teacher and kid ,,
Vot @rudianjani 100 %
I love this creativity of the people and more of the educators who use any resource they have on hand to educate.
When I went to the internship for an educational psychologist, they brought me a child to evaluate. I had never had contact with an autistic child. I had read it in the books. That day a student brought a game that was fashionable a magic cube.
I have contacted him in my post. the students played for a while, of course, none of us managed to put the colors in order, we went to another activity and in that I hear a child screaming teacher is breaking my toy.
the new boy was taking off the decals of the magic cube and placing his colors in an orderly fashion. I would never have thought of that solution, that would be cheating. But I take it as this little one I'm looking for a solution to the approach that I put in his hands. A feature of intelligence that in that classroom of children with mental retardation excels. The child is placed in another classroom at a higher level, because he knew how to find a solution to the problem.
I loved to find this post and I just wanted to tell you this real story.
Sir it seems it is easy to do what u r doing but pracrical is alttogether different.It needs lot of experiance, patience and humour like u.
Regarding this part, i had so far only seen a handful of teachers who kept me loose in class nd honestly speaking , i still remember lectures by class 9th teacher who was of the same category but have forgotten some taught recently otherwise.
Thank you about your activities home.
damn that's another master piece by you today
amazing
Very interesting read. I agree with you, the student wasn't disrespectful. Like you said, school work is too much stress, a little fun/ jokes helps ease the tension and give a relax room for learning.
For me, I can never grab anything in a serious tense atmosphere, reason I never really liked attending some of my classes while I was in school.
The one who is teaching teenager must be really patient and should have a good sense of humor, the same time be strict if its needed. It sounds like you really enjoy teaching and your class enjoys it too. Those moments the kids will never forget and will tell to their children remembering their school time :)