My friend, who was also a teacher of many years, and I were talking about our experiences some time back. We got a bit taken aback, and felt chary about admitting it, but gradually we found a rather strange conjecture emerging...it started dawning on us that through the years of teaching children the value of morals and ethics, correcting/reprimanding/punishing them, and being role models for them, teachers had a tendency to become pinch-nosed-tightly-lipped-sharp-eared-highly-moralistic-and-judgmental-self-righteous prigs with no sense of humor, completely incapable of being lighthearted, and totally devoid of any sense of fun.
Did we have a point here? Was it really well nigh impossible to combine humor with value/ethics-based teaching? Did our vocation somehow excise the funny bone? Did we somewhere lose sight of the fact that we too were very fallible humans? That we were not God? And that even as we were responsible for those we taught, we could also laugh with them?