Day two of CEA’s Summer Conference opened with the laughter of more than 500 teachers listening to keynote speaker Devin Siebold, a former Florida teacher and member of the Bored Teachers Comedy Tour.
“There’s a power to humor,” Siebold told CEA members, encouraging them to try out incorporating jokes in their own classrooms.
Siebold said he first started to think about the power of laughter after hearing people leaving comedy shows remarking to one another, “I needed that!”
It turns out, Siebold says, research shows that laughter is how humans signal safety to one another. Babies aren’t born being able to do or understand much, but they recognize the message behind both screams and laughter.
“Screams—that’s fear. You need to know what fear is in order to survive. Babies also recognize laughter. Why? Because that’s the other end of it. That’s safety for a baby.”
Siebold applied that finding to his own classroom, incorporating humor into the classroom.
“I just simply started telling a joke at the beginning of class. That was all. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds too simple. It took 10 seconds out of my day.”
Students reacted positively right away and soon wanted to be able to tell jokes their own jokes—so Siebold started a Google form so he could screen jokes before students told them to the whole class.
“I empowered them for that day, and then not only that, but they started talking more to each other,” he said. “They started talking more to me. The humor declared that my classroom was a safe space to those kids, and then they felt safe around me and opened up those connections.”
When a principal who was open to new ideas started at his poorly-ranked Title I school, Siebold told him about his success with humor in the classroom. The principal scaled up the idea to the whole school and carried a joke book he’d ordered on Amazon around in his back pocket. He’d tell jokes to kids who were having a hard time—those eager to fight with other students or who’d just arrived back at school after a suspension.
The new principal also instituted “fist-bump Friday,” asking students and staff to greet one another with fist bumps. Attendance had historically been low on Fridays, but suddenly that trend turned around.
The year before the new principal arrived, Siebold says his school had 6,400 referrals. Nothing changed as far as the school’s demographics but two years later, the number of referrals had dropped to 500 thanks to the changes the principal implemented.
“We didn’t just have a 50% reduction, we had a 90% reduction,” Siebold says. “The number just plummeted to the ground, because all those kids needed was to know they were safe. We always talk about it. We lock doors. We do drills. But in practice, the one thing they need is the one thing from birth that’s inside of you. Here you are safe. Here you belong.”
Siebold said a school in Georgia took his advice to heart.
“Somebody came, and they saw one of my speeches, and they said, ‘Hey, maybe we should start this class off with humor or something funny?’ The principal mandated teachers to include something funny, before every class.”
He continued, “This was a horribly violent school, and things were not going well for them. They reduced all instances of insubordination, fighting, skipping class—all of it across the board by 50% in six months just by using humor.”
Wondering how to get started using humor in your own classroom?
“You don’t have to be funny,” Siebold says. “Google a joke. Order a book. Ask ChatGPT for a funny prompt. Make it relevant to your lesson.”
“I really enjoyed the keynote,” says Hamden teacher Katie Kylie. “That connection and inspiration that comes from laughter—it was the perfect way to start off day two of the conference.”
“I work in a school that is for students who have IEPs related to behavioral issues,” says ACES President Cherie Calabrese. “I thought, how cool would it be if our whole school was fist bumping on Fridays? I loved that idea. I felt inspired by Devin’s message and his humor. It was a great way to start the day.”
Looking to enjoy more humor incorporated with professional learning? Veteran educator and viral sensation Gerry Brooks will open CEA’s Reimagining Education Conference on November 3. Register to attend the keynote and enjoy sessions geared toward leadership, the power of play, connecting with students, equity-centered innovation, and new ways to approach subjects.
