As college professors
nationwide prepare for a new academic year, my message for them is simple:
Lighten up! Your students just might engage and learn.
I never dreamed of
being a college professor. Does anybody? When my third grade teacher asked us
about our dream job, Molly said an astronaut; Evan, an actor. Perry: Obtain a terminal degree and lecture on legal morasses.
Whether the subject is
law or nuclear physics, every student wants a good laugh. As teacher
accountability objectives collide with shorter attention spans, laughter is the
secret ingredient to keep everyone on task. Humor can even be found in the most
stressful situations. For example, I tell students that I can't offer legal
advice. But that didn't stop "Steve" from calling me after class in a
panic: The judge gave me ten days for speeding; they're taking me away! So
that night, I drove to the county jail, where the innkeeper ushered me into a
tiny drab room facing glass.
Steve appeared on the
other side, looking weary and wearing an ugly orange jumpsuit. I never
practiced criminal law, so I just put my hand up to the glass and spread my
fingers apart because I saw that done on TV. Steve finally smiled and put his
hand up to mine. He told me what happened, but all I could do was stare at our
mitts and think: Hey, this TV hand thing really works!
While Steve's dilemma
was no laughing matter, I use that story on the first day of class to set the
tone for the semester: Understanding the law is serious business and applied
unequally to funny, young college students without counsel. But we will laugh
and learn a lot together.
To me, humor in the
classroom mixes audience participation with storytelling about the quirky world
around us. The professor and students form an improv troupe, working on the
day's subject. Here are my rules of classroom engagement:
Exaggerate to Illustrate.
Paint an implausible mental picture to reinforce a topic. When we study
"self defense," a limping crazy man wields a lumberman's axe and
approaches a student track star limbering up for a run. If the wild man is 200
feet away, does the student have a duty to retreat or can she pick up and use a
submachine gun conveniently left on a park bench?
Expect the Unexpected. When a cell phone rings, the classroom rule
is that I get to answer it. And when MY phone rang once, the students got to
answer it. Another time, students were nervous for an exam, so I asked a
student to stand up as I gave her my whiteboard marker. I then ran to the front
of the classroom, back to the students, and instructed her to wing the marker
at my head (missed me, wide right). One time I wore a pair of Sketchers to
class but was skeptical on how they looked. I asked for student opinions by
jumping on the computer console table and placing a sole on the document
camera, which projected an Imax theater-size image. The original 360° Tour.
Now you might be
thinking that your college won't let profs be jailhouse lawyers, encourage
students to fling objects, or stand on expensive technology. That's not the
point. The most important rule is to always be yourself in the classroom. You
don't need to have a funny bone; the world around us is a gold mine of
material. Consider this recent headline, Man pleads guilty to DUI in
Motorized Recliner. If the law is funny, so is any subject and thus,
an opportunity to humor up classrooms.
Postscript. I referred Steve to a criminal defense
lawyer but my student still spent three days in jail for speeding. It would've
been zero if he had an attorney at the outset, which shows that maybe nothing
is funny about the law after all.
I wrote this Op-Ed
in 2009 for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Education section
(subscription required), which was reprinted in The Huffington Post. (2010) It is told in story form
in Innovative College Teaching. (2024)
© 2009-2026 Perry Binder
