WWYD? (What would you do?)

This morning while I was enjoying my bowl of pops (gotta have my pops ™) and noticed an article in the newspaper talking about whether we really need those extra two days of school before thanksgiving break. I thought it was a funny article because you could tell the writer had kids; he described the first day as slow and as boring as it was. And the last day of school he mentioned how hard it would be to hold the kids’ attention because it was the day before break. He said ‘Even if you told them there would be a kick boxing match in the gym between Super-Mario and Barney they would not pay attention.’
Now, of course we all know super Mario would win, but it also depends on whether or not Barney had a weapon. But my point being, what can teachers really do to us to make us pay attention? In my Latin class in 6th grade the teacher had tried everything to keep us under control, from rewards to punishments, nothing worked. So about midway through the year she just gave up trying to teach us anything. Even though it was way fun to do whatever we wanted, it still felt wrong to the teacher to be so rowdy, by the start of 3rd quarter most of us realized this and calmed down and prepared to learn.
So what can teachers do? Wait? It may seem like a long and painful road to take, but at least it was successful.