Using Humour - Engineered Interruptions

Playing the Fool, deliberately engineered interruptions

​"I play the Fool in order to bring humour to my classroom. It’s a role that I deliberately take on, like a coat or a cape. I think most of my students know that, even though I enjoy playing the role of Fool, I do it mostly for them.” - Martin Richards

One of my University professors, Alan White, was an expert at keeping our attention at the highest level, by using interruptions. It was necessary since there were 200 students packed into an airless lecture theatre, and the lectures went on for two hours starting at 9 am.
Initially his interruptions seemed to be natural ones.

• The projection screen rolled up in the middle of the lecture. 
• The lights went out, with a bang. 
• The professor left the room in the middle of a sentence, was gone for several minutes then walked back in again and continued lecturing as if nothing had happened.
• The professor walked away from the podium. He walked up the aisle to the back of the lecture room talking and waking up students as he went. Still talking, he turned round and walked back to the podium and continued lecturing to a much-awakened audience.

These interruptions happened so often that we began to expect them. His lectures were interrupted by one of an increasing variety of interruptions, to which we gladly looked forward.
The timing changed from being sometime near the middle of the lecture, to being closer to the end. Indeed some lectures lacked an interruption, which was in itself an interruption!
Our respect for the professor grew as we understood that he was deliberately engineering interruptions for our benefit. We anticipated them, talked about them during the coffee breaks and showed our appreciation of his ever-increasing creativity in providing for our needs, by turning up on time for his lectures.
Towards the end of the year, the interruptions had developed to such a level that we knew that this last lecture was going to include an ‘epic interrupt’. (Continues in the book)
Read about it, and other stories at http://www.martinrichards.eu/books.html
Thanks for sharing this.