By Alexander Adaire Fit Fish reporters | Sixth-grade Adaire reporters in Room 202 recently held a Joke Day. They had been researching the topic of humor and its health benefits and wanted to put what they’d learned to the test.
Laughter can benefit your health by lowering your cortisol, a hormone that causes us to feel stress, according to Dr. Edward Creagan at the Mayo Clinic, a hospital and research institution. Laughter can also increase endorphins, hormones that tell our brain to feel happy, he said in an article.
“Positive humor also draws people together and strengthens the bonds in relationships,” according to the Anthem Healthcare website. “People who draw out your sense of humor help you keep worries in perspective and make you feel better about yourself,” the website says.
For Joke Day, students brought jokes they got from various sources like TikTok, Google, a joke book, friends or family, and some even made up their own. Before students told the jokes to the class, they wrote down how they were feeling at the beginning of class.
They wrote down their jokes and then told them to the rest of the class. Finally, they wrote down how they felt after sharing some laughs. Here are some of the reporters’ thoughts about humor.
I was feeling calm, a bit tired but not in a bad mood. And after, I felt pretty much the same, maybe a bit happier.
─Claire
Before: I felt very tired and kind of discouraged because I had five tests that week.
After: I felt a lot better because of the jokes.
─James
I felt pretty happy before I heard and told jokes. Afterwards, I was feeling a little less happy because my classmates did not get my jokes, but I was still in a pretty good mood.
—Theodore
Illustration by Paul, 4th grade, Cole Manor, 2025-26.
