Tips for casual secondary PE lessons

Hi everyone, I work casually at a variety of high schools in Sydney and while I feel that most lessons I take run relatively smoothly, any time I have to take a PE period (thankfully not often) it’s a complete shitshow. It feels like I’m always on the back foot of trying to keep kids in the right area and try to stop them from doing seriously inappropriate or outright dangerous things. Today the group of Year 10 boys I had, I couldn’t stop kids from going off to completely different areas of the oval, breaking sticks of trees and humping each other and being rude to me when I tried to tell them to stop doing it. I wasn’t anywhere near a staff room either so didn’t feel like I could leave the group to get help. I ended up just giving up on trying to get them to play the sport they were supposed to and settled for keeping them in eyesight and documenting for the regular teacher.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt totally lost and disempowered in a PE lesson at schools where I otherwise find the students to be largely respectful and obedient and I’d like to do better next time. If anyone has any advice to offer in situations like these, I’d really appreciate it!