Nervous Laughter

Man it's irritating when those students laugh out of turn and laugh at anything! I have heard that from a lot of teachers and at first I simply reply, "It's just an adolescent thing, they're silly". But in truth, there are many reasons why we laugh. One of those reasons is nervousness. When we are unsure of what is expected, when we are inhibited about speaking in front of peers, we're nervous and that can result in laughing.

The more the teacher becomes visibly irritated by the laughter, the more the laughter, the more the irritation, instruction takes a backseat once again. So, as usual I am not going to tell you how to fix this. You don't need me to do that because you can do that for yourself by knowing the possible "why" for the laughter—nervousness. Now, what would you do proactively to reduce the conditions leading to nervous laughter? What would you do to reduce classroom anxiety/nervousness? What are some of the things we do as teachers, even unknowingly that contribute to the necessary and sufficient conditions to yield unwanted laughter?

Think hard about the conditions you want to create in your classroom at all times. The best thing about classroom conditions is, for the most part you're in control—well, except for the day the HV/AC goes down, the phone rings off the hook, the Internet crashes . . . .

Stef