Humour
- Yamina Bibi
- May 26, 2020
- 2 min read
Day 52: #DailyWritingChallenge
I have always been a bit of a giggler. When you are a teacher, there is no end to the giggling and laughing. What I love about being in the classroom with pre-teens and teens is that they can make one laugh out loud, sometimes without meaning to do so.
I think this is probably one of the main reasons I enjoy being a teacher so much. When I first started teaching, I had students make me laugh so much that THEY told me off when I just couldn’t stop and then THEY tried to send ME out of the classroom for disrupting the lesson. Many of the times the students themselves had no idea why what they said or what they had done that was so hilarious. Sometimes it was a reaction to a character, or one word unashamedly uttered that would make the whole class erupt into laughter. I mean, even recalling such moments makes me feel instantly uplifted.
Many have asked me how I regain control after the whole class (including myself) can’t stop laughing. For me, it’s all about building relationships and the rules and routines one establishes in the classroom.
We laugh in this classroom but we also work really hard.
We laugh in this classroom but we know our boundaries.
We laugh in this classroom yet we know not to be unkind and hurt others’ feelings. If we do, we have ways we deal with this.
These are the rules I repeat again and again in the early stages of meeting a new class. After all, we promote what we permit.
Interestingly, when I tell others about how much I love being a secondary school teacher, they tend to ask me the question: ‘Aren’t they wild?’ I always retort with an emphatic no. Why? Well because once you’ve built an excellent rapport with a young person, they can bring joy in to your life.
You see, young people spark joy everywhere they go, if you let them. There are so many moments of humour, including ones that make me giggle and ones that still make me laugh out loud until I can’t breathe. This is part of the reason why I’ve stayed in teaching. Once you acknowledge that we have as much to learn from a young person as they do from us, we will see our relationships flourish and the laughter never stop.
If you want to get paid for laughing nearly every day, choose teaching. Honestly, you’ll never stop.
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