eighth graders

I've been told the kids at my school are not the average Turk.  Their money has made them disrespectful, careless,  and snobbish.
They seem like typical eighth graders to me.
I have duty out on the lawn these days, and I'm often left by myself because it's not monitored or managed very well.
The beginning consisted of the fifth graders in the corner of the field SCREAMING at a turtle.  Eventually one of them managed to lift the fence enough so the turtle could get out of the kids' lawn area.  They all screamed after it thinking it was crawling to it's not-so-dramatic death of slow walk off a cliff.  It its more of a deep valley, but as far as the kids were concerned - it was jumping to its death.

Getting the kids to go inside is another issue.  Like routing up wild horses.  I am thankful I hyperventilated for a month in junior high, walking home from school, until I learned how to whistle loudly.

They respond SLIGHTLY better to a piercing whistle.

Today I put my foot down on three eighth graders - I decided I'd introduce myself to them.  In classic middle school response they: didn't do anything, they were helping a friend, getting a ball, both of their names were Can so they didn't know who I was talking too, he didn't know answering in Spanish was disrespectful, he didn't mean to say the word to me - but to the boy NEXT to me.... and so on.

Each once who tried to join in the argument, I welcomed and said, "Welcome! Thanks for joining us - You can hep explain it to the principal too, you will be a great addition to this conversation."

It worked fairly well.