I’m at my wit’s end

The year 7s I have are very cliquey and I made the rookie teacher mistake of not starting with a seating plan or changing it as soon as someone complained about unfairness (why does X get to sit next to a friend but I don’t)

I figured out that all this “I can’t sit next to X they’re so annoying” nonsense is their way of manipulating me into changing their seating plans until they could be next to their friends (all cliques are proven to work horrendously when with their friends). How did I know? They’d accuse kids who never speak in class as annoying to them.

What’s worse was that each clique goes to war with each other and they spend more time trading insults, defending their mates or making false accusations against other students than annoying me (even though it’s very annoying).

I got firm with the seating plans this term and I keep getting more whinging. I gave detentions to students who were outright threatening me to change their seating plans, but the class figured out that I wouldn’t give detentions to their immature whiny antics. We can’t give out detentions as freely as before and even when we could I felt it was an overkill for minor stuff like that, but everyone thought if they all whinged at the same time and made the class unbearable for me I’d cave.

Kicking them out and making them line up quietly outside (a strategy I learned) isn’t doing anything. They just keep pretending how they just want to learn and flipping the blame on me (that I was interrupting their learning).

I held my line and got nothing done in an entire double because 80% of the class was arguing with me at the same time

I feel so bad because lots of my best kids who really want to be in my class are saying they probably should transfer schools to the next town over even though I’m lovely because of their class (the class is apparently like this in most of their other subjects)

I already had so many convos with them about how this kind of stuff would get me fired for discrimination if I pulled that or how you sometimes don’t have the choice of the people you’re living or working with (as has my lovely DP). I got to know many of their goals and how they know they need to lock in. They’re still hell bent on defeating me in guerrilla warfare. I don’t want to fight them but I don’t want to enable them and teach them entitlement will get them anything they want