Blogs

Your Humor Style is Your Communication Partner!

By Mary Kay Morrison posted 03-03-2011 03:46 PM

  
What is your humor style?  If you have not thought about this before, you are not alone.  Many people take for granted their sense of humor.  I would like to encourage you to think about your own sense of humor as you read this blog.  What makes you laugh?  How often do you play and relax?  Have you ever thought about how to improve your humor practice? 

I believe that communication skills are enhanced with a sense of humor.  Think about the people that you gravitate towards. We usually like to be with people who appreciate our sense of humor and who laugh at the same things that we do. The opposite is true. A perceived lack of a sense of humor can intimidate others and/or cause folks to avoid having to be with that person. 

There are several ways that you can increase the humor in your teaching.  Here are just a few:
  1. Start a humor journal. Notice how and when you use humor. What makes your students laugh? record the reactions that you get when you purposefully use humor in teaching. 
  2. Observe what kind of humor you use. Do you use comic strips, puns, gentle teasing, stories, riddles, cartoons, jokes, sarcasm?  Make sure your humor is always positive.  Remember if the impact is hurtful, the humor is inappropriate-even if your intent was not to harm. 
  3. Check out my webinar on the Top Ten Reasons to Use Humor In Teaching.    

We do not really pay a whole lot of attention to humor in the field of teaching and learning. The number one characteristic that students want in a teacher is a sense of humor.  The benefits of using humor in education are numerous and discussed at length in my book, Using Humor to Maximize Learning.  Humor research information is available through the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor and at my web site, Humor Quest.

I would love to start a dialogue on this blog about how you use humor as a teacher or as an administrator.  
2 comments
24 views

Permalink

Comments

03-03-2011 04:04 PM

Absolutely Jason! There is a great resource on humor in the workplace called, FUNWORKS by Leslie Yerkes. She actually researched places of business that use fun and laughter as one of their core values and related it to productivity and stress levels. She states that an environment of fun leads to a culture of trust. Thanks for your comments!

03-03-2011 03:54 PM

Mary Kay,
When thinking about humor, it seems the first step is to be sure to not take yourself too seriously. Wish I could say this was always easy to do. I believe it depends on how safe of a working environment has been created. I do believe the more laughter there is in any environment (i.e. work, home, etc.), the more productive it is due to all the fun. Just my two cents worth.
Jason