Dale, a middle school teacher from North Carolina, found a way to deal with a pet peeve: kids who blurt things out during class.
I told them the story of when I was a kid and worked on a hog farm. At feeding time, I would dump the bucket of feed in the trough and open the gate to let the hogs in. When the hogs start to eat they snort, and when one snorts all of them snort. I have been telling my class that they remind me of the hogs. When one starts to talk, all of them start to snort. So I asked them to please stop snorting.
The last couple of days, they have been much better. When the class starts to snort, all I have to say is “I’m not at the hog farm.”
(From Middle School Teacher.)