It's a Funny Thing

Humor is a very human construct.  Something that can change our attitudes so quickly from negative to positive.  Something that can make us forget, even for an instant, about the unfortunate things in life.  Humor is an incredibly positive thing to me.  I've always attempted to place humor in my work, even if only a bit.  Something to crack a smile in the viewer, to get a laugh out of the audience.  I find that it helps in the understanding of artwork when a positive set of emotions is evoked.  I'm not trying to say that artwork made to evoke negative emotions is bad, I just personally enjoy the positive set more.  So with that in mind I do believe it would be best to, as I do with my art, use humor in the classroom.

Now here's what I find funny.  If you type "humor in the classroom" into a search engine you are given approximately 12,000,000 results.  Each of these results is an article or paper or instance of humor in the classroom.  So there is no shortage of precedent on the positive impact when you crack a joke in your lectures.  Though really the important part is what the best way would be to include humor in the classroom.  I'm thinking a mix of not being so serious and adding humor as a main topic in my lesson plans.  I've got time to really work the kinks out, so no real pressure on that.  I think I'm a humorous kind of guy, though it could be that people are laughing at me and not with me.  Yay, just made myself really self-conscious.

I leave you with some comedy. 

"Humor" search first image through google images as of 12/2/12