Having Fun Yet?

What is the most important element in teaching? There is no one answer to that question. There are so many attributes to being a great teacher. Furthermore, there are so many different styles excellent teaching that it is impossible to box in the notion of being a great teacher into definable, consistent characteristics. However, there are some correlations. Here's one I want to focus on tonight: cooking dinner.


Yes please. [Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkyIrrfp6k5LDfGN1Bbc4OQUSqbeLRVZ_KV7M2HJKh6DrsPJkO-70SUPqKRKappSWuuHEuKEJPQdpbM2YxrhDCSW1VqDcCC91G5FisBONYj__86CYuoe8oGvuQiRIQHdrtmeC4O_7EoQ/s400/Giant+Breakfast+Burrito.jpg]

Sorry I haven't eaten dinner or started cooking tonight. No, tonight I wanted to focus on having fun. I can't tell you how important it is to have fun while teaching. On so many occasions I've taken the world's most boring discussion on kinematic equations and made it fun by pretending like it was fun. No joke. Well, it's more than pretending: you have to actually believe its fun.

What do I mean? When you take the classroom, you have to be in love with what you're about to teach. The students will pick it up immediately in your body language. On the days when I convey a modicum of boredom or frustration, my kids don't work for me. But when I attack their attention by jumping up and down when I convey an idea, by showing bright, wide eyes, and by keeping a smile on, they pay attention and they will love it too. I've had students laugh at my dumbest jokes. Today in fact they literally laughed when I explained that it was silly if the gravitational constant G was equal to 1. I explained with a smile that in that universe they would feel a force of a few thousand Newtons and come slamming into each other at all times. Before that, they cachinnated (yeah I know it means laugh loudly but I hate the word guffaw) when I demonstrated what would happen if, as they suggested, the force you exert when swinging a bucket around a circle pointed up. I flung the bucket upwards at the top of its motion and it hit the ceiling and my kids went crazy. Not to brag, but I had a room full of 15-year-olds laughing as they integrated new physical concepts into their schema. OK that might have been bragging. Sorry.

The point is - if you believe your subject is fun and teach it with joy, your students will believe it's fun too. In a subject that inspires fear like Atilla the Hun piloting a Death Star, it's all too important to communicate to students that they can succeed. Not only does fun make the classroom climate palatable, it also makes them more likely to work for you. Furthermore, some students may even look forward to your class.

So take to every class with love and with excitement. You owe it to your students. Otherwise they will be evil, skeptical, and stupid.


Erm... Sorry I had to. [Image: http://i.qkme.me/DkF.jpg]