Tag: silly

Things I Know 31 of 365: Silliness is golden

I love to laugh.

– Uncle Albert, Mary Poppins

You know what made Captain Kirk great?

Not the countless rescues of the planet(s) cum galaxies cum universe((s)?).

Not his rainbow of romantic conquests.

Not..his…ExceptionalCadenceWhenSpeaking.

James Tiberius Kirk was great because he could have fun. The guy heeded Mary Poppins’s advice, and took a spoonful of sugar on each mission.

Almost every episode ended with Jim, Bones and Spock on the bridge ribbing each other as though they’d forgotten thwarting death once again.

Lately, it strikes me the fun is neglected more often than not when we talk about teaching.

I’m not talking learning.

I’m talking teaching.

It’s fun.

Seriously.

My best days in the classroom are those in which I do one hundred silly things before lunch. If I’ve taken my work seriously, but not myself, I’ve done alright.

I don’t get the feeling programs like KIPP put too much stock in silly.

That might be the real danger.

If we’re truly facing some of the most complex challenges of the modern or any era, building classrooms of Borg is not the answer.

Success should include an element of silly.

Saturday, Diana, Ros and I led a session at EduCon on interdisciplinarity. The ideas were flying, and nearly 50 educators from all over the country joined us.

We spoke of supports and obstacles. We shared resources and we networked. We deliberated on the existence of common ground between scripted and project-based curricula. Many pieces of the conversation challenged my thinking.

The most tweeted moment from the session?

A joke I made.

No profession should ever be this starved for funny.

Yes, times are hard. Yes, the policy debate looks like it was designed on the island of Dr. Moreau. Yes, budgets are drying up faster than Cuba Gooding Jr.’s career.

And, we’ll get all of that sorted out.

First and always, let’s have a little levity.

It will save us.

When Mike Myers faced off with James Lipton on Inside the Actor’s Studio, Myers commented on the most important lessons he’d learned while growing up poor.

His parents taught him the value of free fun and of silly.

I’ll buy that.

When I hear about the incredibly high burnout rates of new teachers, I cannot help but think their professors taught them how to teach, but not how to have fun doing it.

And, it’s too much work not to have fun doing it.

I love teaching because teaching the whole child requires me to be my whole self. Every day, I access my passion for learning and asking questions – all the while looking for the funny.

Seriousness of mission and purpose need not mean seriousness in execution.

Classy: Bringing silly and embracing unsatisfactory

In the eyes of the over-trained, I was an unsatisfactory teacher for a good long time today.
My instructions to my junior English classes sounded something like this, “I’m going to give you five minutes. Talk to your team members about the high and low points of your break. Also, talk about what you’d like to get out of the first half of 2011.”
That was it.
At the end of five minutes, no one was held responsible for doing something with the information they just gained. No one reported out.
It gets better.
The next instruction, “You have two minutes to come up with a team cheer.”
Two minutes later, the class watched as each of the 8 teams of four performed their cheers.
A personal favorite, “My name is Jeff and I invite you to experience the bountiful garden that is Team 7.”
It was a good 10 minutes of class.
I left out the opening. I left out the new material. I left out the guided and independent practice. No objective was on the board. All told, I was fairly unsatisfactory.
I don’t care.
My students got new seats today. Many of them are sitting with kids with whom they might not otherwise socialize. For 10 minutes, they took time to get to know one another, to collaborate with their new team to create something without academic penalty and to present as a group something that built a collective identity.
And, to practice being silly.
For the rest of the class, focused research on a writing project with the potential to create positive change in their communities.
For 10 minutes, though, pure, unsatisfactory silliness.