Rather fearful of having my horrid year 8s tomorrow, we had a little 'incident' before their exams (internal KS3) and the holidays- one of the good ones in the class comes to a club I run, and she and the other 2 girls who had turned up that week were talking about their classes being noisy, so I chipped in with "oh yes, your class are very noisy aren't they? It's hard to teach sometimes", or something along those lines.
Then in a lesson with the y8 class another student piped up, saying "miss, I have it on very good authority that you said we were the worst class you've ever taught", so I pressed her for where I said that. She said it was my club. Yet I'd said nothing of the sort!
Haven't seen them since then, and tomorrow needs to be a lesson where they listen to me for a considerable amount of time yet they have zero respect for me at this point I'm sure. I need to go through the exam with them, and then explain their project for the rest of the term. Which means they only really need to listen to me for this one lesson but don't know how to do that! I'll have a cover supervisor in with me to help- just hope it's the one who usually comes in, as she knows what they can be like, and therefore how useless I am with them! Might have to rope my head of department in for parking- think she'll be more than happy to help!
Lots of this group are coming on the trip with us in a few weeks, and I think it will be nice to see them out of lessons, but it's come to the point where I've had to say to my mentor that I don't want any of them in my 'roll call' group when we're out and about- not because I dislike them, but because I genuinely wonder whether they would actually listen to me!