Lynn How
Lynn is the Editor at Teacher Toolkit. With 20 years of primary teaching and SLT experience, she has been an Assistant Head, Lead Mentor for ITT and SENCO. She loves to write and also has her own SEMH and staff mental health blog: www.positiveyoungmind.com. Lynn…
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Are you a practical joker?
There’s always that one member of staff who lightens the mood during the year … Could it be you?
I will hold my hand up here and state that I am not a big fan of practical jokes. The last thing anyone wants in an already stressful job is someone playing pranks at inappropriate times! This post comes with a health warning as timing and gauging your audience is everything. Check that you really think the person on the receiving end will be suitably amused (and they haven’t got an impending lesson observation or similar). After all, it’s only fun until somebody cries …
I have provided here a selection of amusing and non-threatening practical jokes, that even I would see the funny side of and won’t prompt an email from human resources.
Top 5 jokes
1. Jellied stapler: Choose your victim, find their stapler, then set in jelly. They will walk in to find a perfectly set jelly on their desk with the stapler in the middle.
2. Ransomed knick knack: Find an item (not too special) in your colleagues room such as a stuffed toy, then take photos of it in various places with a ransom note. Their class will love the process of finding ‘who dunnit’. You could even send the class postcards of the toy or item taking a holiday.
3. Sugar paste rubbers: Use sugar paste (for cake decorating), to make real looking erasers and then randomly eat them during class or staff meeting (please note that eating non-food items is actually a real condition, so read the room before doing this and ‘fess up’ quickly!).
4. Leave a Smartie smile: What’s not to like? Not really a joke more of a good deed. Put a smile made of sweets on a colleagues desk (wrapped ones for the germaphobes).
5. Doughnut seeds: Perhaps pre-warn parents about this one! Provide children with some hoop shaped cereal in envelopes, say they are seeds and start a doughnut plant competition. Once children have worked out that it’s not a thing (fairly quickly one would hope …), they can also play along by sending in photos of their donut tree when it ‘grows’. You can look very impressed when you receive photos of doughnuts on a tree. The more inventive the better. Get other staff and classes on board as well! Please note, this may not be good for our youngest children as a) they will believe you and b) they may just eat the seeds.
Hope these ideas make your days, weeks and months just a little bit more fun!
