Ignorense Is Blis

By Tom Willis

Ignorense is Blis is a collection of humorous short quotes, stories, jokes, and situations from the white board of Tom Willis, a high school science teacher in his 20th year. Tom has been using these jokes for years to greet students as they enter his classroom and get them into a better mood for learning. The humor spans from simple puns to complex science related wit meant to inspire and entertain the academically inclined through the daily drudgery of everyday school (or work) monotony.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477128909

Tom Willis

Tom Willis and Brad Zimmerman are the Co-founders of Phoenix Performance Partners, a dedicated team of businesspeople, psychologists, and educators with decades of experience in business leadership and coaching. Once a classroom teacher, Willis brought his passion for lifelong learning to his leadership and service as CEO of Cornerstone, a school system in Detroit. Zimmerman, also a former CEO and successful sales and operations leader, discovered the joy of organizational coaching more than three decades ago. He has dedicated his life to helping businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations develop cultures that transform work environments-so people grow and their companies thrive.

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Copyright © 2012 by Tom Willis.

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Contents

Foreword

Appendix

Foreword

Teaching is hard. Most kids aren’t interested in teachers rambling on about their subjects. There are much more interesting things going on in their lives. Their girlfriends, boyfriends, parties, cellphones, sports, video games, family drama, and that piece of lint on the floor all take precedence over listening in class. One approach that’s helped me through my twenty years of teaching high school science is to incorporate as much comedy as possible into my classes. The basic strategy being that the student might pay more attention making sure they don’t miss a joke, and then may learn something in the process. To set the mood as the students arrive, I decided I would write a joke on the corner of the white board each day for the class to read. It started off just being science related jokes, but it soon turned into jokes about anything. It didn’t really matter to me as long as it helped to start the class off with the kids in a good mood.

The classes got into it pretty quickly and appreciated the effort, even though the kids didn’t laugh at or understand all of the jokes. Using student suggestions and input, I’ve either changed or trashed a lot of them. After writing jokes on the board for quite some time, a girl in my class said, Hey Mr. Willis, you should put those in a book. After intensely scolding her for publicly speaking her mind, I decided to try to get that done. Also, students were taking pictures of the jokes on their phones, sending them to friends, and posting them on Facebook, so I thought it would be a good idea to publish them so I wouldn’t lose credit for my work.

So this is my book of white board jokes. Every Friday is Five Things Friday where I put one of my Five things lists on the board. The kids seem to look forward to those and you’ll see those regularly throughout the book. You’ll notice that I have jokes for various holidays and school functions as well as different times of the year. The kids like the topical stuff. I’ve also thrown in some longer jokes and stories that wouldn’t fit on a white board, as well as some student comments and questions that I think you’ll find amusing. Since I’m a science teacher, you’ll see some science and subject specific humor which you may not fully understand, although most of the book is not science related. I’ve taught a lot of different science subjects, so a little of everything is thrown in there.

I’ve included an appendix in the back that explains many of the jokes because very frequently I have kids who don’t understand them and ask me for explanations. In the appendix I’ve also included other background information that might be interesting and educational about the various topics. Heck, you might actually learn something by reading this! I’ve also tried to throw in some humor in the appendix to make it more enjoyable. If there’s no explanation in the appendix and you still don’t understand a joke, well, I don’t know what you should do. Go watch TV I guess, or perhaps take a walk.

I do want to give big thanks to Stephanie Conner who helped me edit this book and gave much good advice. Thanks also to Helayne Bankoff, Leigh Wansley, and Katie St. John for their input and suggestions. Lauren Tingler, a recent graduate, as well as Wayland, Karla, and Vanessa are the students that provided the authentic doodles from their vast library of notebooks. And thanks to our photography and journalism teacher Matt Day and his students for the entertaining photography. Those students are Hogan, Owen, Will, Evan, Taylor, Graham, and Connor. What a great job they did! But most of all I’d like to thank my many hundreds of students for their constructive criticisms and recommendations, and for having great senses of humor and being hilarious on a daily basis.

Five back to things that are worse than back to school:

1) Back to Prison

2) Back to the Future Part III

3) Back to December by Taylor Swift

4) Back to Level 1 in Modern Warfare 2

5) Back to back episodes of Living Lohan

Five firsts that are worse than the first day of school:

1) Your first day of work

2) The first Justin Bieber album

3) The First Crusade

4) Your first angioplasty

5) The first five minutes you ever saw of the show Hoarders

Over a lifetime, being a slow reader saves you a fortune on books.

You shouldn’t pay attention to a person’s skin color, unless the color is blue. That means that the person is choking.

If your child is an honor roll student, then he should be intelligent enough to understand why you don’t want to put that bumper sticker on your car.

Not everyone puts his pants on one leg at a time. There’s a man from New Zealand that suspends his pants from a wire loop and jumps into them.

Five toys that had to be changed before they became famous:

1) Hula Cube

2) Serious Putty

3) My Enormous Pony

4) Work Dough

5) Army Reserve Men

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