To be sick of having my stuff trashed

[flobird]

Stupid rant and I just want sympathy but I am so fucking sick of giving pens and rulers out only for them to be smashed and thrown across the room or crushed/wrecked.

I feel like I'm constantly replacing stuff

You can't start confiscating phones because they could well refuse to hand them over. 5 mins at break time might work but if they walk out then that's that. And of course if it's a 15 minute break, the teacher misses a third of their break too.

My older dc go to a school that was similar a few years ago.
Parents who "cared" sent their dc to either the grammar school or to another school a long bus journey away, such was the reputation of this school. As a result, it was full of unmotivated children, who knew they were the dregs of the local community.
The school changed names a few times, but never really changed, until it became an academy and zero tolerance rules were set and stuck to.
It's now a very good school, with excellent teachers, best attendance rates for decades and exam results rising every year.

I feel for you op, if you don't have support in managing this.
The only way my dc's school changed was through a massive, dramatic overhaul of the whole system.

Le Chien has raised a good point, I think... A lot of these ideas do work in secondary schools and in tough ones too but only if the management are committed to a huge overhaul of the system as a whole. Punishments need to be followed up on and escalated if necessary. This often leads to a high-number of exclusions in the short-term but does ultimately pay dividends. There are plenty of secondary schools where "kicking off" is very very rare. I've worked in my current school for 7 years and not once have I been sworn at or had my property destroyed. I have known of a couple of instances of students telling staff to "fuck off" both got 5 day exclusions. This week a student deliberately tore another student's work up... I gave her a detention. She turned up because they know that the school will escalate their punishment if they miss detention and that the SLT do care how they behave in class. She copied up her classmate's work neatly and apologised. That's the culture of our school and it is achievable anywhere but it comes first and foremost from the Head. Classroom teachers can't create that on their own.

Ask them to come back when they're equipped and ready to learn ... Make it their problem. If they ask where to go, look confused and say "wherever you left your pen

Can't believe you got away with this!

I was once interrupted in class by a pupil from someone else's class coming in to ask to borrow a pen. She had basically done the above and succeeded in disrupting lots of other lessons - I was particularly put out because I had just finished the pen-lending and had started work. IMO it is a selfish way of sorting out a problem - it won't impact the penless or SLT, just your ordinary chalk-face colleagues.