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As your children play during the summer, their teachers are putting together their game plans for the fall. The Davis School District is getting its teachers ready with some classes that might seem a little unusual.
If you ever need a joke, find Davis School District New Teacher Induction Coordinator Brian Pead. He's in charge of being funny.
I asked him, "What's a good opening joke for a kindergarten class?" He said, "Well, anything with ‘underwear' in it is a good joke for a kindergarten class."
He might use something else, like a prop for high school seniors.
"A bumper sticker [that reads] ‘Where am I going and why am I in this hand basket?'" he said.
The jokes he's telling aren't necessarily for students. For now, Pead is teaching other teachers in a class called "Making Serious Learning Fun."
"Research shows that, in a spirit of humor or mirth, kids learn about 50 percent more. Learning is the most engaging and fulfilling and fun kind of thing anyone can do, and why do we make it so full of drudgery?" he asked.
The Davis School District is giving a lot of its teachers more instruction on how to get kids more interested in learning. For example, they have a class called "Closing the Gap with Multicultural Math." And I always thought math was math no matter what culture you lived in.
Davis School Staff Development Administrative Assistant Elizabeth Alldridge said, "There are counting games that different cultures use that they use little stones or little pods."
Alldridge says putting math problems on the board won't necessarily ignite a student's passion for numbers.
"Children learn in different ways, and so if they have the opportunity to learn math by touching it and by seeing it, it sticks with them better," she said.
It's also getting ready for potential problem children in the fall. It has a "Love and Logic" class which helps elementary school students learn the natural consequences of their actions. And, if love and logic don't work, there's always the "Tough Kid Classroom Management Class."
"It focuses more on why children behave the way they do and strategies that you can do that will help them learn what is acceptable and what is not acceptable by focusing on the positive," Alldridge said.
The School District even has a class designed to reduce discrimination based on the book "Teacher, They Called Me A ______."
E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
