That’s right! It’s not just a fad, but even school psychologists are learning about the healing power of humor. Read on and find out what they’re being taught about humor, health, and laughter in dealing with students.
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From NYSUT.org
By Liza Frenette
Humor helps people connect. Often, there’s a hidden strength beneath those laugh tracks — and it can be used as an intervention in schools.
The New York Association of School Psychologists conference in Albany had several sessions on humor. When used inappropriately, humor can be insulting or embarrassing, and it can alienate a student. But when humor is used well, it can encourage contact and help students relate.
A team of scholarly “humorists” from Fairleigh Dickinson University — Samuel Feinberg, Yifat Wassermann and Erika Rodger — presented a primer on how to use humor in schools, including avoiding aggressive or self-defeating humor, and using self-enhancing and “affiliative humor” to improve the practice of psychology.
“Humor itself is not inherently therapeutic,” said Rodger. “It should be clearly relevant to the issue at hand.”
Help gain insights
In a crisis, humor can establish a rapport and provide positive reinforcement through shared laughter. It can help students gain insight into their difficulties.
“You have to laugh or cry at some things that go on in education,” said Feinberg, a former school psychologist and retired member of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers. “I picked ‘laugh’.”
As a school psychologist, Feinberg regularly was called on to help students who were pregnant, in gangs, struggling with poverty or suffering from abuse.
“These are stressful situations,” he said. “If you become so upset, you can’t help them.”
At first, a student is painfully close to their crisis, and the work is to help them get distance.
“If they’re too involved in the crisis, they get enclosed and will stay in the cycle. They can’t act; they fixate,” Feinberg said.
Once the framework is in place to get some space around the situation, “humor can further that distance and reinforce perspective,” he said.
There is a caveat, though: “A person has to acknowledge what they’re going through before we can use humor.”
The trio of presenters recommend using humor when:
• the other person uses it first;
• the situation is appropriate;
• it’s aimed at yourself;
• making fun of a situation; or
• you have a strong relationship with the other person.
NYASP President John Kelly presented on “Having Fun While Getting the Job Done.”
Kelly, a member of the Commack Teachers Association on Long Island, is a member of NYSUT’s Health Care Professionals Council.
On hand for the visual context was John McPherson, a nationally syndicated cartoonist who entertained conference-goers with examples of his work with school themes.
One cartoon that drew many belly laughs was a “solution to overcrowded classrooms,” showing desks stacked on top of one another like a parking garage.
McPherson credited school psychologists who helped his children “as they struggled with learning in their grief” while he went through a divorce years ago.
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