106th Students Remember Laughter More Than Tests - By Sheryl

It's wonderful to have a former education minister in Italy state the importance of a friendly classroom, but what will it take to have all current politicians here in North America realize this truth? All across Canada and the United States, the authorities insist on testing as a way to increase student achievement despite many studies that reveal the failure of this approach.The biggest tragedy of this for me is how much we are wasting the creativity of our teens. Just when their brains are developing the ability to think abstractly and to be creative , they have to spend a lot of time in schools memorizing facts that they can instantly access on the phones . No
My students' creativity constantly amazes me. I am often in awe of how they respond to assignments where their imaginations have free reign. I love evaluating those assignments because each one is unique, each student's interpretation an expression of how alike and unlike they all are. When a final exam response includes the performance of a spoken word poem along with a brilliant talk full of laughter, stress and boredom are simply not in the room.
But laughter does not come easily to me. I am by nature rather serious and so I've had to work hard at creating circumstances in my classroom where laughter is a frequent and welcome visitor.
I have also taken a course about laughter in which I learned about how well our bodies and minds respond to laughter. I discovered that laughter is actually quite a serious matter! In fact, it turns out there is a link between laughter and creativity. The more you laugh, the more creative you are when solving problems. Wouldn't it be great if students could have a laughing session before each test? There's a research study that needs to be done!