The Laughing Classroom
   Diane Loomans & Karen Kolberg
  1993 H. J. Kramer Inc, Tiburon CA USA
   ISBN: 0915811448


With a Foreword by Steve Allen & a Backword by Professor Oops! this Everyone's Guide to Teaching With Humor and Play offers teachers of formal education a hands-on text book to add humor and heart to their teaching day.

From the Preface: “If you are a teacher, congratulations! This book is for you. It's a guide to help you reawaken your playful, spontaneous self, which may have gotten lost somewhere between correcting the papers and collecting the paycheck. It's a plea for play - an appeal for you to tap your funny bone - not just on weekends or during vacations, but during your teaching day, when you have the most influence and power.”

Martha Weston has decorated this delightful text book with animated & hilarious illustrations, offering comic strips to demonstrate how a frown can become an upside-down smile or Tag-Team Talk or Sixty-Second Mirth-Quakes or Singing Lessons & so many more!

Can you imagine Becoming a Laughing Teacher? Or giving your students Laughing Lessons? Or an exercise in “Functuation”? Or doing the Chalk Walk? Or doing your Humor Homework? In Fifty Excuses for Not Laughing or How to Look Like You Were Weaned on a Pickle, Diane Loomans & Karen Kolberg have given us a list of really sad excuses such as: I'm too old to start laughing now or my parents never taught me how or I don't have time for such nonsense. They don't make any sense except as a lame excuse for keeping that oppressive power over the exuberance of youth!

In the Four Humor Styles you'll discover what your humor style could be. Are you a Joy Master or a Life Mocker? Are you a Joke Maker or a Fun Meister? Everyone's met a Life Mocker(the opposite of a Joy Master)who is sarcastic, coldhearted & cynical. Joke Makers & Fun Meisters can have dark sides too - too many insults or stereotyping or ridiculing or degrading. The whole idea of The Laughing Classroom is to teach seriously serious teachers the funny side of life & cynical & sarcastic teachers the inspiring, healing side to humor.

There's a useful Glossary of teaching terms and a “Giggliography“ - a list of books for your personal library which will aid you with your professional growth. Tom Blanche's Teaching Twitches and Learning Itches or Sandy Dune's Overcoming Ninja-itus or Bill Tell's Thriving on Chaos in the Classroom & many more!

So, anyone know a teacher? Want to give your children's teachers something other than apples or candy? Then consider The Laughing Classroom when next you want to show your teachers your appreciation - they might like it & so might your children!

I'd like to see The Laughing Classroom in every teacher's briefcase so that the classrooms in which our children spend so many days of their lives, could be that much more joyful, relaxed & learning-oriented.

Other books by Diane Loomans: Full Esteem Ahead: 100 Ways to Build Self-Esteem in Children and Adults; The Lovables in the Kingdom of Self-Esteem; The Lovables(a board book for young children); Positively Mother Goose with Karen Kolberg and Julia Loomans; Today I am Lovable: 365 Positive Activities for Kids.

Attention, Laughing Teachers! We would love to hear about your success stories, teacher-tested techniques & words of wisdom for future publications. Please send us your comments & insights to:
Global Learning
Attn: The Laughing Classroom
P. O. Box 1203
Solana Beach, CA 92075
(02/11/01)
Rebecca