::A Geek in Korea::

Holding a classroom of 10-15 students attention is a lot easier if you use humor from time to time. I am not the funniest person on Earth, and I don’t claim to be a comedian. I’m just a guy that wants to teach some students, but, to a group of Korean kids, ages 6 to say, 12, I can make an entire class laugh pretty consistently.

Today I had a stock set of jokes that I that I worked on in my first class. For this joke, I was being extremely obtuse and letting the students get one over on me on purpose to practice their vocabulary and pronunciation. The text book featured a drawing of a king. The king had a royal looking robe, a golden scepter, and a gem encrusted crown.

I drew a picture of the king and put blank spaces for each of the items. I asked the students to name each item the King was supposed to be wearing. Seeing as I know my students pretty well, I knew there was no chance any student would correctly pronounce the word “crown” correctly. The “cr/cl” blend is one of the hardest for students to learn.

The students were trying their best, but the first response I got every time was “Clown! Clown!”. I then drew my best looking Bozo the Clown on the head of the King. The students would huff indignantly and then say “Crrrrraaaawwwon….Craaaawon”.

“OH! Now I know.”

Then I’d erase the circus freak and draw a gigantic crayon on the king’s head. This got another peal of laughter, and then a chorus of lame boos. They’d ask me to drop the charade and just tell them how to say “crown” well. It worked well, and to be honest, my lesson plan was a bit short, so I needed to use this same material again in the next class.

I tried this exact same routine in my second class and got the same results. This time worked like a charm, except by the end there was one student laughing so hard everyone else thought she had damaged her brain. She went on laughing far, far too long, and it actually might have even been a sarcastic “over-laughter” you might do if you wanted to point out how unfunny a bad joke actually was. It’s like the sarcastic clap, but more annoying.

I didn’t expect sarcastic meta-humor from a girl in an audience of third graders. Either she wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, or she was just trying to waste time, I couldn’t decide.