HUMOR IN THE CLASSROOM

Yearly student evaluations of faculty were another source of humor, or at least they were at times. Most students were fairly kind with their ratings and remarks although I received a few negative stingers. One said I was a bad teacher, another said they were looking forward to taking other science classes because I wouldn’t be teaching them. One guy, who for some reason signed his name, wrote, “Let Dyche teach here until he is dead.” I wasn’t sure if that was a positive or negative remark. One year I had a couple of African students in class who had been trained in their country to stand up when addressing a faculty member. One day I was demonstrating osmosis using a dialysis baggie, starch, and iodine. I brought the apparatus over to where one of the African boys was sitting so he couldsee things better. I was immediately in front of his seat and asked him a question, forgetting his standing up habit. When he jumped up to answer me, he of course hit the baggie-starch-iodine apparatus and iodine flew all over my beige (now purple) tie. We were both embarrassed by our clumsiness, but the class found it comical. A couple of kids even thought we had planned it to sort of relax the class. Not so, but most students got the answer right on a test question involving osmosis through a dialysis baggie. During an elementary teacher’s math/science workshop, participants were assigned the task of obtaining the circumference and diameter of a particular tree. Each pair of teachers had their own assigned tree. Participants were given string and meter sticks to make their determinations. They were also asked to find the relationship between the circumference and the diameter. The first team to report stated that the circumference of their tree was a little over three times the diameter of their rather large tree. A second group measured a much smaller tree. They stated that the circumference also was about three times bigger than the diameter of their tree—but added that the measurements must not have been correct since they had a small tree and got the same answer as the team that measured the large tree. I originally thought my well-planned lesson on pi had been for naught, but on the unit exam most students remembered the humorous tree measuring activity and got the questions pertaining to circumference/diameter correct. Once, at a workshop, we took the teachers to an orchard of tall trees interspersed with large boulders. Our point was to get the teachers to make inferences about the oldest thing in the orchard and to give reasons why. More than one participant listed the two instructors as the oldest objects in the orchard because they had gray hair, were balding, and had wrinkles. We responded that we had been told that we were older than the hills, but never older than giant trees, huge boulders, and dirt. Often my summer workshops for elementary teachers were, not surprisingly, filled entirely by women. One time during such a workshop on identifying plants, we were walking over some hilly terrain. We came to a place where we needed to jump over a small ditch. As I feared, one teacher slipped and twisted her ankle. As the only male in the group I took on the persona of an athletic trainer/medical doctor. I examined her injured limb and loudly stated that it was swollen, blue, and the ugliest ankle injury I had ever seen. The teacher, between low moans, kept saying, “Dr. D., Dr. D.” and I kept telling her to try to relax and keep quiet. Again she said, “Dr. D., Dr. D.” and I abruptly shouted, “What is it?” She replied, “You are examining the wrong ankle.” I wanted to crawl into that ditch and hide my red face and bruised ego for an eternity.One semester I was teaching a large section of introductory biology. A few of our college’s clientele were nontraditional types, often from a nearby air base or were dependent spouses of military personnel. That year, I had two very intelligent, very motivated, attractive women in their early 30’s competing for top honors in the class. One was brunette, whom I’ll call Tina, and the other a blonde that I will name Leigh. They were friends—off the field of battle-- and were also lab partners. Both put hours into their studies and I believe there was a bit of rivalry over the professor’s attention as well. Each spent considerable time going over with Dr. D. material that they already knew very well. To make a point of how picky they would be in answering test questions, let me refer to a genetics question on a biology exam. Students were to choose the answer that reflected observable traits in a human. I had indicated “tall, dark and handsome” as the best response, but they argued for the answer “none of the above” because handsome was not really an observable trait---that it was in the eye of the beholder. They had me on a technicality so I grudgingly gave them credit but was steamed that the two of them had outsmarted me. They were probably sitting outside in Leigh’s van laughing at me at that very moment. A few days later Tina and Leigh’s accounting instructor stopped me on the stairwell and asked me how I handled those two. She claimed their extreme drive to get everything correct made her physically sick. The bottom line—the two of them should have been at an Ivy League type school. They could have taught many of the classes in which they were enrolled. I’ll always remember their herculean efforts, their competitive spirit, and willingness to laugh at a funny situation (particularly if the joke was on the professor.) They stayed in touch with me for a while and now have high-level positions in business