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As a concurrent science and education student, my first education assignment (4 years ago) was to write a teaching philosophy as a brief reflective essay highlighting an understanding of how students learn and how instruction can best assist that learning. Looking back to my earlier philosophy and comparing it to my current philosophy I found one clear common thread in enhancing learning: humour. According to Grierson (1986) resistance to learning can melt in the face of humour. It is intrinsically motivating. Humour captures learners with its novelty, conflict and challenge. It stimulates both brain hemispheres, coordinates the senses and produces a level of consciousness that brings “the brain is at it fullest capacity ” (p.6). Berk and Nanda (1998) confirm that humour causes the brain’s reticular activating system to allow access to higher order function. As they put it, humour thaws brain freeze when taking tests. Coderre (1991) states that students learn and remember up to five times more when they are involved and smiling. e.e. Cummings once said, “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter”, I couldn’t agree more. Working in an elementary school for the past three years has opened my eyes to how important humour is to the student/teacher relationship and the learnin