Laughing while learning: Northwest teachers bring classroom comedy to the stand-up stage

Don Gavitte’s comedy career started at his father’s funeral.

It was 2018. Gavitte was supposed to deliver the eulogy of a man he said had “spent most of his life crawling into engines.” His father had worked at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York until he was 77. He died when he was 80.

But as Gavitte looked out at the funeral audience, he saw the place packed with JFK workers, some still wearing their IDs or uniform blues. He smelled the familiar scent of his father, like a mechanic’s garage or hydraulic fluid.

The emotions were too hard to bear. So he told a joke instead.

“There’s gonna be some serious fuckin’ delays at JFK today.”

Everyone erupted with laughter.

“When that joke hit, and everybody just relaxed, my mother stopped crying for a minute,” Gavitte recalled, “that was where I’m like, ‘I can make jokes outside the classroom.’”

Gavitte is in his 25th year of teaching social studies at Grant High School in Portland. He’s been an educator for three decades. And as much as he loves what he does, he said his father’s death reminded him that there are things he wants to do with his time besides work.

Gavitte began taking comedy classes in Portland shortly after he returned from his father’s funeral. He soon approached his comedy teacher with an idea to bring his two worlds together.

That’s when he launched “The Teacher Show: Comedy from the Classroom,” a live, stand-up comedy showcase performed by teachers, mostly about teaching. The show has played at venues throughout the Pacific Northwest, from small comedy clubs to large theaters. It’s a local take on a national trend in comedy where working professionals joke about their day jobs.

The lineup may change, but the theme stays the same. Whether it’s an elementary school teacher from Federal Way, a calculus instructor from Portland or a robotics professor from Corvallis, all who perform in the show are actual educators with stories to tell.

Pulling back the curtain

Gavitte started off a recent U.S. Government class with music and a video. A rubber chicken sat on a corner counter. Gavitte’s laptop was open on his desk, covered in colorful stickers, including a cartoon cutout of restaurateur Guy Fieri’s head.

Gavitte stood and spoke to the students from the front of the classroom, wearing essentially the same blue shirt, khakis and lanyard he would wear to his comedy set later that week.

He told his class they were going to be learning about the Constitution but not reading it word for word. They would learn the contents of it and understand its place in the modern day.

“Hopefully,” he quipped, “you’ll all be in that dwindling percentage of Americans who actually know the basics of the Constitution.”

Gavitte is no stranger to leading a classroom or cracking jokes for a tough audience. He likes to say he does five shows a day, every day, in his classroom.

Starting as a teacher in New York in the ‘90s, Gavitte said he had no supplies, no materials, “no nothing.”

“I had a piece of chalk and my mouth,” he said. So, he begins every class with a joke. If he can make the students laugh, he said, they know they can trust him.

The teacher-comedians bring that experience to the stage during “The Teacher Show.”

At the Infinity Room comedy club in Salem earlier this month, some of the comedians vented about their classroom pet peeves, such as students eating noisy snacks or repeatedly asking, “When am I ever gonna use this?”

They joked about the exhaustion that comes with the job. They poked fun at the bureaucracy and political drama schools are often swept up in. They laughed about teenagers blushing when the number 69 is ever mentioned. And they lamented about younger kids speaking with no filter.

“Recently a child told me, ‘Your teeth are too loud!’” preschool teacher Tina Hogstrom told the Salem audience. “My mouth was closed.” She paused as the audience laughed.

“And I have not thought about anything else (since).”

“The Teacher Show” keeps selling tickets and getting positive feedback.

The show’s “It” factor comes from school being so universal. Even folks who haven’t been in a school in years likely have a connection — as parents, grandparents or friends of people who work at schools, or simply just from being a neighborhood taxpayer.

Yes, audiences get to hear the teachers spill the tea on the class troublemaker or a pesky administrator, but they also get a glimpse into the normal ups and downs of teachers’ lives — their hobbies and insecurities or harrowing tales from their dating history.

“I remember the teachers in my life who would … kind of let something slip in class about being cool … or having a tattoo or something. And that was always so exciting,” said Emma Jonas, co-owner of Salem’s Infinity Room.

“It was like this weird mythology (that) the teacher had a wild life once, and you want to see that,” she said. “That idea is enticing, even as an adult — kind of removing the veil over the authority of something as basic as ... a teacher.”

A cathartic experience

Teacher shows are one example of a shift in the comedy scene across America. The New York Times reported last year on an uptick in work-related shows, such as comedy tours on nursing, as stand-up navigates increasing political and social divides.

Jonas said comedy offers a unique outlet in hard times, describing it as a “salve for your brain.” It allows us to feel OK, she said, and to remember that we can feel OK.

“For people to come into a room with the goal of laughter, of just feeling pure enjoyment together, is such a nice escape from being out in the world,” Jonas said.

“The Teacher Show” also offers a particularly cathartic experience for the educators — in their seats and on the stage — as they laugh about and say things they might not be able to express in the classroom or the teachers’ lounge.

Todd Basil, a comedian and college calculus instructor in Portland, said he used to be more concerned about sharing too much on stage or facing retaliation. Now, he sees the show as a way to find validation.

“I feel like in every industry, there’s no debrief time after you have your stressful day at work,” he said. “And so, any chance you get to hear someone else talking about thoughts that you’ve had is pretty magical.”

Some of the teacher-comedians have young children. Some hope to one day pursue comedy full-time. They all have to balance the show with their regular work.

Katie Nguyen is a high school Spanish teacher, comedian and comedy teacher in Portland. She said for folks who don’t do stand-up, it might be easy to see this as leaving one job to go to another.

“Obviously, we get paid to do this, and we get booked. And you know, it is a job,” she said. “But I don’t think it feels like work for any of us.”

The comedians said performing benefits their students as much as it does them or the audience. Gavitte said it’s helped him better connect with his students, in part because he’s around younger teachers for the show.

“Teaching is a young person’s game in so many ways,” he said. “You know, I keep getting older, the kids keep staying the same age.”

After 30 years on the job, “The Teacher Show” has allowed Gavitte to fall back in love with being an educator.

“Even though it takes my time,” he said, “my teaching is feeding the comedy, and the comedy is feeding the teaching.”

Gavitte said he may end some work days exhausted before heading to a show, but he wouldn’t trade it. He walks through the halls after a night of making people laugh with more energy and confidence.

“I got a little more snap in my step,” he said. “I love doing it. And I don’t wake up tired — I wake up psyched.”

How to see ‘The Teacher Show’

Want to see “The Teacher Show” yourself? Some shows are for audiences 18 and up; others are in 21+ venues. Here are spring 2024 performances in Oregon and Washington:

• April 5 at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the Infinity Room, Salem
• April 6 at 7:30 p.m. at the Showbar @ Revolution Hall, Portland
• April 13 at 8:30 p.m. at the Gallery Theater, McMinnville
• July 11 at 7 p.m. at the McMenamins Elks Temple, Tacoma
• July 13 and 14* at 7 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Comedy/Bar, Seattle *Second show is Don Gavitte only

See the latest Teacher Show news on their Facebook page.