Literacy Jokes Update February 2013

Ok… first day of training today for the year with our literacy and numeracy professional development course. We’re over in Whakatane with a group of trades and vocational training tutors from several private training providers.

They’re quite a funny bunch… picked up a couple of new jokes from them for my (eventual) literacy numeracy stand up comedy routine. Probably these won’t make sense to anyone else but for the record:

1. At one point today I asked: What’s a metaphor? The building tutor directly opposite me piped up with out hesitation: “I know what a hammer for, but I don’t know what a metaphor…”
2. And at another point I was painstakingly trying to unpack some of the hellish acronyms that my industry insists on using. They’d already guessed that “LN” stood for literacy and numeracy. I put up my slide with the list of about 10 common education-related acronyms that I like to make sure everyone understands. I pointed to “LLN” which was next to “LN”. “What’s that”, I said… “You know what LN is. What’s LLN”. From beside me I hear: “Easy… it’s LN said by someone with a stutter…”

In other news from today, I had the good fortune to bump into the proprietor of the hotel I’m staying in this evening. I was playing table tennis with my daughter and I guess we’d been making a bit of noise. Obviously, he was unaccustomed to hearing the sounds of laughter and fun in his establishment and he felt the need to press me for a few more details.

“So… Graeme”, he said. “What are you doing here?” At that stage I still thought he was trying to work out how I got into the games room. But after an uncomfortable pause I realised that he was asking me what I was actually doing over in Whakatane.

So, I launched into my standard explanation of what I do. Immediately, I could hear it in the tone of my own voice… the sound of his eyes glazing over. Nevertheless, I pressed on diligently and gave him the full treatment… An excellent, and concise summary of the joys of literacy and numeracy professional development and training.

Needless to say, he left quite quickly after that…