Unruly students can make a teacher's life hell. And while the usual punishments like detention and calls home to mom and dad exist, they often do little to deter determined troublemakers.
But now, in the wake of the release of the highly-anticipated Avengers: Endgame, some teachers have come up with a very innovative - and effective - form of class control: threatening their students with Endgame spoilers.
Genius.
This is the behind-the-scenes clip Chris Pratt shared from the movie:After all, while the movie has been out for just over a week, when you're a high schooler, you might not have had a chance to save up enough of your pocket money to see it or pester your parents into a cinema trip.
To put how good this movie is into context, prior to its release, Marvel fans were left with the cliffhanger to trump all cliffhangers at the end of Infinity War, when, with a snap of his fingers, Thanos obliterated half of the universe.
And even though it's not been in theatres for long, Endgame has already broken over 30 box office records.
Now, the teachers who've been threatening their students with spoilers have been sharing hilarious pictures of their antics on Reddit and Twitter. In the example below, every time the class got too chattery, a new spoiler letter was added.
Recounting her logic to INSIDER, Rebecca Shamsian, an English teacher in a New York City high school, said that she got the idea on Wednesday after a pupil informed her that she hadn't seen the movie yet.
So, when he got a little too chatty in class, she threatened him with a spoiler.
"I told him that if he didn't stop distracting people right now, I would tell him an 'Endgame' spoiler," Shamsian said. "I could see his eyes widen, and immediately he closed his mouth and turned towards the assignment. I have literally never seen such an instantaneous result with a student."
Then, when the same pupil misbehaved again later that week but still hadn't seen the movie, he was threatened with a spoiler again:
"I said, 'Oh, have you seen 'Endgame' yet?' His response was a pitifully unbelievable: 'No - I mean yeah.'
"I said, 'OK great, so you don't mind me saying that Thanos-' and his hands FLEW to his ears. Needless to say, the rest of the period was perfectly on task."
However, spoiler lane is a two-way street, and some teachers have begged their students not to spoil the movie for them.
According to Shamsian, Endgame couldn't have been released a better time, as the spoiler class control technique has been useful in helping her to control her pupils as the summer break approaches:
"When the weather is warm and the year's almost over, the usual method of reminding them that their grade will be affected, or warning that you will call home, doesn't make an impact. But the one thing I know my students care about is 'Endgame."
