In a 2014 post, Where Has The Joy Of Learning Gone, neurologist Judy Willis explained, “The truth is that when the joy and comfort are scrubbed from the classroom and replaced with homogeneity and when spontaneity is replaced with conformity, students’ brains are distanced from effective information processing and long-term memory storage.”

So then, the idea of joy in learning. Not joy for the emotional benefits but for the neurological effect and the residual human ‘lifting’ and growth that occurs when emotion and understanding occur together.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to the idea of ‘joy’ in learning than ‘tips and hacks.’ That said, visit Teach Thought website for 20 ways that might be useful–in a time of stress, uncertainty, and at times great difficulty–to bring some joy back into your classroom. Many of these apply to remote teaching/remote classrooms as well, but these ideas are intended for teaching in general rather than pandemic-only teaching.