creative discipline and laughing at students

Okay, so I will tell the more troubling story first because chronogically it happened first AND I feel like being chronological, PLUS it's just nice to leave a happy taste in a reader's mouth.

So, as you can see from my recent photos, it snowed for the first time in Straldja a few days ago. Sunday, to be exact. On Monday, the Monday before the big Christmas vacation, the kids were NUTSO. They usually are nuts, but the snow and pending vacation heightened the maddness to fever pitch. By fifth period the thin gloss that is discipline in Bulgarian schools had completely eroded, and it was all I could do to keep my ninth-graders (my most consistantly favorite class) inside of the classroom.

Anyway, some of the jerkoff boys in my eigth grade class escaped from music, went into the empty room next to mine, climbed out of the window onto the roof, and proceeded to make snowballs. They came running into my classroom and pelted my kids, my desk, my floor, and myself with snow. And I...was...hot... Oh no no no no no...I had had enough interruptions and problems and stupidity and I was not going to take this crap. So I followed them as they ran out of my room, realized where they had gone to get snow, and once they climbed back out to get more I closed the window, locked it, then locked the door to the classroom so none of their croanies could bust them out. The said croanies were in the hallway speechless, murmuring that "Miss Rebecca has locked them out of the building! She has locked them on the roof!" (Note: this window is the only window that opens on this part of the roof).

I returned to my class and they looked at me with wonder and disbelief. After a few minutes we heard the boys on the roof throwing a fit when they realized what I had done. At the end of the period I went and opened the door to the classroom to let their croanies bring them in again. They were shivering, wide-eyed and stunned into silence. By the looks on their faces, I shouldn't have problems with them for the rest of the week, if not forever.

So I must say that I would never have even THOUGHT of doing this in America, where there are things like liability. But in America there are also things like detention, ISS and suspension. Here, they lack anything. Literally, locking my students on the roof was the only way to prevent them from decorating my room with snow! They don't listen, and why should they really? They don't give a crap about grades, and that is the only leverage we teachers have. It's a crazy, crazy system.

But now for the funny story...Not to say that wasn't a funny one. Today I was in my decent fifth grade class (they are loud, but they generally learn) teaching them nationalities: people from Bulgarian and people from America are Americans, etc...I taught them "-an" and "-ish" and "-ese," and the oddball ones like French and Swiss...Then I asked them to guess some. They did well -- "Italian miss!" "Russian miss!" "Chinese miss!" Then I asked, "Kak ce kazvat horata ot Germania? (What are people from Germany called?) One girl, one darling little girl, announced loud and proud, "Germish!" (pronounced "jermish").

I could not hold back a jerk of laughter, and they all looked at me inquizzically. I could not explain to them what "germ" is in English as I do not know the word in Bulgarian, and I could not explain the concept of "ish" as being something to make the word an adjective, so the joke was lost. But it remained with me, and I will now rename a number of English nationalities:

Italish; Turkese; Englanese; Chinish; Mexicese; Swizterish; Canadian (that one's not funny, but the people sure are!); and my favorite -- Amerikese!

And I'm spent.