Laughter the Best Medicine?

Exams have just got over for most of the children around the country. And what a load off their shoulders!! What serious faces! And on the last day of the exam? PHEW! IT'S OVER!! I wonder how many teachers noticed that.

It made me wonder at the enormous stress our children carry on their shoulders. How much they are subjected to varies from one school to the other, and also from one child's ability to take stress to the other, but we as teachers could consider the possibilities of making our classrooms considerably stress free. Seeing sunny , cheerful faces is a pleasure. Here we can say that, we cannot ignore encouraging sobriety, reserve, and somberness among children. How much of humor is to be brought in and when, is for the teacher to decide. The teacher must consider making the classroom moderately stress free. Some heavy subjects/lessons can be made interesting/palatable by adding a dash of humor. We all know that laughter, humor reduces tension, and a tension free mind is more receptive to learning, therefore it does make sense to incorporate humor in the classroom.

Educationists, psychologists, and experts have given this area a thought, and feel that a laugh or two in the class does have its place in the classroom. I read somewhere that humor in the classroom:

a) increases learning speed

b) facilitates retention of novel information

c) improves problem solving

d) relieves stress

e) reduces test anxiety

f) increases perceptions of teacher credibility.

Therefore developing a healthy sense of humor goes a long way as we can see. It can as a side effect facilitate better adjustments of the child at home and in school among peers. So heres to some lightheartedness in our classrooms...

Don't miss reading the first paragraph given in the book that I have put up in the link. You'll see how societies in the world take laughter so seriously :):)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0897898923/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

Troubled Teens-Violence in Schools

Recently in a school in Delhi, a young boy was killed by another, and although the reason(s) have not been stated clearly, family enmity was speculated. Whatever the reason, the very fact that youth today feel free to take the law in their hands, and actually show an incompetence in being able to handle anger, shows the rot in our education and value systems. Now this brings in a growing fear among parents at large, in a new area in their lives, and yet another one in parenting, to deal with. It has happened in one school, it could happen in another. It's a very disturbing trend.Teachers and parents must take this seriously, must start worrying about ways of curbing this, and preventing other such incidents from happening again.

Using lethal weapons, going to such an irreparable extreme, could the child even explain such an action? Could he pinpoint to what led to this, on introspection? Should we put the blame on the child entirely? He must be serving time at some juvenile jail, but WHO IS TO BLAME? Too many factors have led to this, I suppose , and it is time we discussed them all, without taking it lying down. It shall remain an on going discussion, no doubt, but that we have come to this is cause enough to lament.

A few sites can be visited to see the reasons, cures etc. Don't stop at that, don't forget it, act on it whether you are a parent or a teacher, help make this world a more peaceful place to live in. For however many years we come to this world, lets not spend that time in getting angry, lets spread love instead.

Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends......

http://712educators.about.com/od/schoolviolence/School_Violence.htm