Two experienced elementary principals leading challenging suburban schools believe principals' greatest responsibility is helping others. To survive, principals should maintain a sense of humor, grow thicker skin, regard parents as potential allies, team with staff and respect their individual talents, hire the best teachers, and act in students'…

This article offers an abbreviated curriculum to help middle school students learn to use humorous strategies to cope with stress. An introductory discussion reviews the literature on coping and the benefits of humor. Outlined for the curriculum are student goals, unit concepts and generalizations, differentiated learner objectives, differentiated…

Humor can not only provide motivation for learning but can also contribute directly to the learning itself. Presents and analyzes excerpts from a number of classic pieces of comedy writing. Contains 28 references. (DDR)

Presents five articles on humor in early child care: (1) "What Makes Young Children Laugh?" (David Elkind); (2) "Humor as a Tool in the Workplace" (Jerry Parr); (3) "Vincent's Vignettes" (Vincent Duffy); (4) "Family Humor" (Bill Strader); and (5) "Books to Tickle Funny Bones" (Karen Stephens). (SD)

Assesses children's cognitive and emotional responses to negative emotions in family-formatted situation comedies. Tests children from two grade levels who viewed a sitcom that featured negative emotions. Reveals that inclusion of a humorous subplot distorted perceptions. Discusses children's social learning from television. (PA)

Recounts experience of being an overweight preschool teacher. Discusses children's, colleagues', and parents' reactions to overweight people and to society's concept of obesity. Recommends humor to deal with weight issues in the classroom and tells of meaningful encounters with children about obesity. Describes other adults' embarrassment when…

Describes funny characters in children's books and films, including humorous children, adults, and animal characters. Considers younger children and middle grade and older children and suggests library media center activities for various age groups. (LRW)

As colleges, universities, and schools move to offer more classes in the popular online format, both teachers and students should be aware of what may be absent in class: the routine benefits of humor. For years, student surveys on the characteristics of the most effective teachers routinely have placed humor as one of the top five traits (Hart…

This article discusses the importance of humor and how it helps to understand children's thinking from birth to 6 years. The article presents three sections describing how a young child's sense of humor reveals much about the way he thinks. The first section is entitled "Giggles!" written by Carla Poole. Intended for babies from birth to 2, Poole…

For young teen girls, reading has become hot again. With their appealing covers, witty heroines and humorous plots, teen chick lit books are bringing girls out of the malls and into local libraries and bookstores in search of the next must-have title. These fun books are about boys, friendship, family, fitting in, and growing up. What makes the…

On a daily basis, American television and radio audiences are subjected to a stream of broadcast Public Service Announcements (PSAs), each promoting "some kind of social or economic action deemed beneficial" (Stridsberg, 1977). Often, these announcements employ humor as a presentational device to help stimulate the behavioral change…

This proceedings contains half of the papers presented at the third annual conference of the Association of Teachers of English Grammar. Papers in the proceedings are: "Grammar as a Method, Not as a Subject" (Marilyn N. Silva); "Using Humor to Teach Grammar, or the Grammarian as Stand-up Comic" (Frank Peters); "Grammatical…

A study focused on investigating perceptions of sexist humor, specifically on how people perceive others' reactions to sexist humor. Subjects, 206 college men and women, rated communication competence and attraction of actors in vignettes depicting 2 different reactions to sexist humor. Results indicated that sex of both the joke teller and the…

This paper examines linkages between educational philosophy and classroom activities and presents 10 guidelines for early childhood teachers and administrators to effectively strengthen these linkages. The 10 guidelines are: (1) each child has a capacity to respond to what the teacher brings to the classroom; (2) educators need to open the world…

Deliberately writing badly can be an effective way to learn to write better because knowing when writing is bad is an essential element in knowing when it's good. There are distinct advantages to encouraging students to learn the rules by breaking them. Deliberately doing it wrong removes the threat of failure. Students are playing; they are…