Come on Feel the Noise

I've been teaching for almost six years now, and I've gathered a whole bag of tricks in the meantime. I've got activities to cover spare minutes at the end of a class. I've got games I can manifest to reward a my good little students. And, I've got an assortment of punishments for my naughty little boys and girls. The way I manage a class of kids varies from day to day and sometimes depends too heavily on my mood. If I'm sick, forget about it, my threshold for pain is minimal and I'm quick to whack my stick on the table and deliver a hearty "YA!" to get my students' attention. Kids who are paying attention can anticipate the slamming of the stick and cover their ears accordingly. See, that's the thing,...it's all about who can be the noisiest sometimes.

I have some students who like to talk. More specifically, they LIKE TO TALK. INCESSANTLY. AND AT TOP VOLUME. You know when they like to stop talking? They don't. If they're not forming coherent Korean sentences, they like to shout random words in English, or parrot everything I say. And if they're not doing that, they're just emitting noise. Humming or singing or (one of my least favourite things) drumming their pencils on the desk. Some kids made some videos awhile back on how they're professional pencil drummers. I'd like to jam those pencils up their,...well. *Ahem.*

I'd like to think that the noisiest of my noisy students quiet the hell up when they're sleeping, but I have no evidence to remotely support that theory.

When I say to these shrieking bags of noise students, "Please repeat after me: 'Do you know where the library is?'" They shout, "DO YOU KNOW WHERE DA LIBRAAAAAAARRRRYYYY ISSSSSSSS?" Sometimes they get the cold stare of You're-Not-Funny-And-Do-Not-Impress-Me. Sometimes they get to stand with their hands up in the ay-er. (But they better not wave 'em like they just don't cay-er.) Sometimes the sound of the thwacking of the stick rings through the classroom. Yesterday I didn't feel like getting bent out of shape over the noise, so I would just stop speaking and gaze at the students until they managed to quiet themselves down. Usually it's those perceptive students who know to cover their ears who urge their classmates to shut up. But as I stare my students into silence, my mind wanders.

Yesterday I wished I could levitate them. I wanted to fix my eyes on the nosiest of the bunch and just lift him up into the air about three feet off the ground. I figured that would get his attention. Maybe floating above his chair would quiet him down. Than I figured that he'd probably think that was fun. All the students would want to be levitated, and they'd bombard me like they do with game requests, "Teacha, game? Onil game hay-o? Today game? Game, game, game?" Only it'd be "Teacha, levitate me? Onil levitate hay-o?"

So I didn't just want to levitate them. I wanted to nauseate them at the same time. I want to nausivitate them. Not so, like, they'd hurl while they were up in the air, but just enough of a bad feeling to turn them fairly green and make them wish they could return to their seats and stop floating around. I was daydreaming, imagining my students hovering around the classroom. Ten quiet green kids just afloat above their chairs. I didn't really notice the class had gone quiet.
"Jelly?"
I snapped back to reality. "What?"
"Game time?"