Description
Keeping your students engaged in the lesson can be hard, sometimes. Why not add humor and fun to your habitual communication, then?
Comedy and humor are great resources in every teacher’s toolbox. Small jokes and a funny mood can spice up your lessons, and give them that particular flavor making them unforgettable.
This course will allow you to improve your capacity for public speaking by digging into humor and comedy. It will help you explore the humoristic side of your personality, and learn to exploit it for more effective communication – at school and in life.
As a potential participant, you might feel that you are not funny enough to take the course. As past participants like to say, however, they didn’t discover their full comic potential until they took the course!
The course will have a strong practical component, so be ready to get actively involved! Participants will work alone, in groups, and in the class to explore their personalities, looking for their unique comedy style and voice.
They will practice public speaking and their verbal, non-verbal, and para-verbal communication, giving and receiving feedback from the trainer and the group.
Participants will also learn about different types of comedy and some of the most popular performers, their differences, and their styles.
Moreover, the course will dive into how jokes can get edgy, political, and uncomfortable, and what is the need for “safe spaces” in different contexts like business and education.
By the end of the course, participants will know how to mine their everyday life to find good “comedy material”. They will have improved their writing and delivered a humorous speech thanks to the feedback from the group and the trainer and numerous tips from public speaking and acting; and they will get more comfortable telling jokes and using humor in lectures, presentations, personal and professional life.
Learning outcomes
Participants in the course will learn to:
- Explore each own individual “comic potential”;
- Write comedy and jokes for a variety of settings (classroom, advertisement, social media, public speaking);
- Deliver jokes and weave them effortlessly into personal and professional communication;
- Reflect on the controversial and edgy aspects of comedy and humor, about the opportunity of boundaries, and what can be appropriate in different contexts;
- Deliver a speech, with exercises and practice coming from theatre, improvisation, and the public.
Tentative schedule
Day 1 – Course introduction & setting goals
- Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities;
- Icebreaker activities using games and debriefing;
- Identification of needs and goals for each participant and relevant populations;
- Presentations of participants, their schools, and the trainer.
Day 2 – What is humor?
- First introduction to the topic. What is funny? Participants will introduce each other looking for “funny” elements;
- Presentation (1) on comedy classics and stars, from the beginnings until the 1990s;
- First public Speaking workshop with feedback from the trainer and the group. We will exercise voice, body, eyes, hands, and movement.
Day 3 – Overcoming fear and nerves
- Creativity and warm-up improvisation exercises;
- Overcoming the fear of failure and judgment;
- Presentation (2) on comedy stars. The most recent years (2000-today);
- Writing workshop: Mining everyday life for comedy material.
Day 4 – Delivering jokes
- Workshop in small groups: Refining delivery of jokes and humorous speech;
- Group Delivery: Each participant will deliver 5-7 minutes of funny speech or comedy;
- Feedback.
Day 5 – Other types of humor
- Workshop: “edgy” humor, the dark side of comedy and boundaries;
- Comedy for social and political causes: 2 case studies;
- Advanced public speaking with 2 minute “elevator pitch”, integrating humor and jokes in public speaking;
- Feedback.
Day 6 – Course closure and cultural activities
- Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussion;
- Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
- Excursion and other external cultural activities.