It’s come to my attention that I can occasionally freak people out with what I write about deep, important topics in the field of education.
So, I’m going to keep doing it! Put bluntly, I think our best decisions are often made when we’re a little freaked out. We could do with more freak out, I say.
But I’m going to take a slightly sideways step today into something else we could do with a little more of. It’s laughter.
Of course, not all of us need more laughter. A recent study concluded that the average 6-year-old laughs around 300 times a day.
And the average adult? We fall into a range of somewhere from 15 to 100 chuckles per day.
So here’s what I propose. As leaders in education, let’s close the laughter gap that has so gaped across the lines of age.
Given what we know about the therapeutic and mental health benefits in a good guffaw, swift action is required. We need to boost the laughter rates of the adults in our schools – pronto! Let’s set a quota of 150 and plant things, events and circumstances across our schools that provoke spontaneous fits of joy.
And let’s catch ourselves when we tell our students to stop laughing, to sit up straight, to be serious and to grow up.
Perhaps we haven’t been setting the best example of what healthy well-adjusted adults do in order to preserve their own wellbeing and sanity.