Today’s word: laughter.

If you’ve read any of our student blogs from yesterday, I’ve got a small population that’s REALLY ticked at me for “tricking them” into signing up for the challenge. In their first blogs, they expressed their displeasure with me: “This is stupid.” “Mr. J is a horrible person.” “For me, I think it is extremely platitudinous.”

Oh. My. GOODNESS.

I’m not going to lie, I laughed. A lot. As I read over shoulders, and read some of these blogs, I was dying. One boy asked if he could spend 31 days complaining about these blogs, to which I replied, “Absolutely! You know what you are doing when you are complaining? Writing!”

He didn’t like that answer too much!

As I’m in the hallway in the morning when the 8th graders come in, there so many times where laughter is used to make student feel welcome. Whether is a dumb joke someone wants you to listen to, a crazy story, or a silly statement (I was told today, “I’m not a trained assassin…yet!”), laughter is the language that everyone understands. It’s the elementary teacher in me that gives students that little bit of time to tell those stories because we are that safe place for them. If we don’t give them that time, where will they get it?

Seeing the humor in what we do (with the stroke, I get stuck on words, so my wife says it’s like playing a real life game of Mad Libs), because if we can’t, we are stuck. Many times, the goofy things 8th graders (or 16 year old, an 18 year old, or my wife) d0 can lift my spirits after a tough morning. Today, I drove my wife to school because she dropped her work van off (long story) and thought it wasn’t starting up.  Actually, it was my wife getting out with this tiny little ice scraper, asking, “Who buys stupid things like this??!!” That made me laugh!

I’ve told my students that I’ll be watching in the hallways for inspirations, and I just had four students in here, happy they get a three day weekend, complaining about class, but laughing at each other. That kind laughter, the one of being young and carefree, that keeps me young as well. It’s always nice to see that around our school. We teachers tend to laugh at ourselves as well, and the students always enjoy that! A student once commented about how the laughter made her feel good about coming to school, that if teachers can laugh, school must not be so bad. Thanks, I think! 🙂

So, as you pay attention this month, looking for slices, see where the laughter is your life coming from.