My Stand Up Comedy Routine

I recently attended "Using Humor to Engage Students in the Classroom by Dr. M. Cundall through Faculty Focus, a webinar that was made available by Magna Online Courses.  

Some of the key takeaways from this session included: 

• Finding humour in the incongruities and as a method to build relationships with students.
• Acknowledging that there are many different ways to engage with students and using humour can be very effective provided that you do so with caution.  You must know your audience and be thoughtful in which types of humour you try to employ.  Observe the classroom environment and act accordingly. 
• The use of self-deprecating humour can help to humanize you, and make you more authentic to your students (I definitely make fun of myself all the time when I am teaching and play to the many librarian stereotypes).  One such method is to recognize your errors and poke fun at yourself for the error.  
• Classrooms are performative, so end with your best joke!

The webinar provided a different perspective on learning.  It acknowledges that you can be silly or funny and still respected professionally.  If the goal of teaching is to increase engagement and provide meaningful learning activities, then you can (and should) have fun doing so!