How To Use Humor To Teach and Engage Your Students

Ever since I was little, my brother, David, has been a teacher. My mom thinks it’s one reason I did so well in school. He would come home each day and teach me everything he had learned in class (he’s 2 years older than me).

The problem is that sometimes he just made things up, and I always believed him. It took me a few years to learn that a North American Takeoff Bird is not a thing.

David went on to get his PhD in communication and become a lecturer at Texas A&M where he is teaching a new generation of students about things like public speaking, argumentation and debate, and this fall, the rhetoric of humor (something he kinda made up).

He’s also become well known for how he uses humor to engage his students and get them excited for traditionally dry subjects. David recently gave a talk on how to add humor in the classroom, which you can watch here:

How have you seen humor used in the classroom? Did you have any particularly funny teachers?

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