Professors Are from Mars, Students Are from Snickers: How to Write and Deliver Humor in the Classroom and in Professional Presentations

by Ronald A. Berk

Professors and students seem to come from different planets (or candy bars). Barriers frequently exist that impede their communication, such as age, income and cholesterol level.Humor can break down these barriers so that professors can better connect with their students and other audiences. It can be used as a teaching tool to facilitate learning. Ron Berk describes and illustrates a wide variety of techniques that can be integrated systematically into instruction and professional presentations. For professors who consider themselves as "jocularly arthritic", this book moreover provides a special it is close-captioned for the humor impaired.Berk's techniques are "the product of ten years of inadequate development, testing and research." But why take the author's words at their face value? Consider the testimonials of those who have actually attempted these methods in their own classes and I tried Ron's methods in my philosophy class, I had an attendance problem. Now, no one comes to class.' -- H.I., Slot Machine U., Nevada'Applying humor to my engineering courses led me to understand the meaning of humiliation and rejection.' -- J.K., Toyota College, Kentucky

Genres: Humor

185 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book in a library brown-bag sale, where you spend $5 for as many books as you can fit in your brown bag. Usually, either these are books the library has multiple copies of or there is now less of a demand for them.

Ronald A. Berk tries to instruct teachers on the importance of adding occasional humor in the classroom, and offers a how-to section as well as a listing of jokes he says we can steal. I don't know that the how-to part is helpful to me, but I enjoyed the listing of jokes. Many of them, however, I've seen elsewhere over the years.

Another resource on teaching mentioned the importance of humor, and so I had scoured the internet looking for appropriate physics jokes for my class. They tend to be on the order of dad-jokes. I find them funny, but my students rarely laugh. They might smile politely. (One actually did laugh today.) I hope that at least the jokes will make the topics more memorable or perhaps even add a bit of clarity.

I am not a stand-up comedian, and I thought this book might help with my delivery. Now, I just think that I will be hopeless at it, primarily because I don't think fast enough on my feet to come up with a spur of the moment joke. However, I intend to continue with the physics dad-style jokes, primarily because I enjoy them.

Today's joke (on relative velocities):
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Einstein: Did the chicken cross the road or did the road move under the chicken?

This joke actually continues throughout the school year, with a turn from several different physicists.

This author, Ronald Berk, teaches biostatistics, and so some of the examples involve stats. It's been too long since I've had stats ... Of course, some people may feel the same way about physics.

I plan to leave this book in the teacher lounge with a sticky note saying anyone who wants it can have it.

Favorite quotes:
"Neil Rorem has defined humor as "the ability to see three sides of one coin."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names involve my lawyer."

"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."

I also like the (probably made-up) reviews on the back of the book:

"I used the humor strategies in my gross anatomy course this semester. The cadavers were more responsive than the students."

"I took Ron's suggestion about office hours on my economics syllabus and I haven't had to meet with a student since." I actually went looking for the office hours suggestion in this book, and couldn't find one.

"Applying humor to my engineering courses led me to understand the true meaning of humiliation and rejection." Although I've tried to use humor in my physics course, I very rarely use humor in my engineering course, because it's harder to get those students back on track afterwards.

I did today, but it was an accident. I had found a funny quip from Spiderman which I thought applied to engineering ethics. I decided not to use it, because of said getting-back-on-track-problem, but then ended up accidentally clicking on it when I came to that point in the lecture. At that point, I just let it play rather than trying to stop it and looking like a complete idiot. I think they enjoyed it. Of course, they may also have enjoyed me looking like a complete idiot.

[Pauline · Rating 2 out of 5]

The examples were probably the best part of the book, but the more abstract discussion of the use of humor in the classroom seemed a bit dry to me, which it too bad considering the topic. Perhaps it's because he's an academic writing for other academics, but it seemed odd how frequently he cited various authors' works to back up his points. To me it seems clear that humor is helpful, and I was looking for the how-to aspect of it, not for the classroom but for public speaking in other contexts. Berk uses exaggeration a lot, and after a while that doesn't strike me as particularly funny, but I guess that's his style. On the whole I didn't find it particularly helpful other than as an encouragement to try to use humor more.