The Heckler

I was asked to cover a chemistry class during my prep period last Thursday. I figured it'd be an easy day. 

I had two students in person and twenty-odd online. They had an assignment on aqueous solutions. I offered my assistance, but no one took me up on it. 

After accidentally logging out of the meet and returning, I got a notification that someone from outside the "network" wanted to join the meet. Since I didn't know the students' names (I had a roster, so I could have looked), I assumed it was a student who was on the wrong computer, so I let him in.

Mistake. Big mistake.

After a couple minutes of the usual silence, he turned on his microphone and began playing some rap music that was wholly inappropriate for school. Sex and drugs and swearing and such. I muted him (to minimize the disruption) and removed him from the meet. 

It doesn't take much time to actually remove someone from the meet. I remove kiddos at the end of the period (when it's clear they're not there to remove themselves) all the time. 

Problem solved? Not so fast... 

It was a while later, like a half hour or more, when someone joined the meet via a phone. I know, because what showed up on my screen was a partial phone number. (Google stars out the majority of the phone number, for privacy, I suspect.) 

He immediately turned on his sound and played some other rap music that was inappropriate for class. I hit his mute button and removed him from the meet. 

When I remove someone from the meet, I get a pop up asking if I want to file an abuse report. As I usually remove kiddos for inattention (when I'm closing out the meet), there's no need. But this time, it was abuse report time. While figuring out the abuse report and composing my complaint, guess who called into the meet again? 

This time, he started in on me. He called me names. Said insulting stuff. I'd give you a rundown, but I wasn't really listening. I was hitting the mute button and then the remove button. He unmuted himself before I removed him, but that lasted another second or so.

He tried a couple more times. Luckily for me, I got faster at this the more he did it.

(No, I could not prevent him from connecting. I looked for a "deny entry" button, but didn't find it then. I'll have to look around for one in case this happens in the future.) 

In the chat, the students expressed their dismay. One boy said the intruder was exhibiting crazy fan behavior. Another couldn't figure out why he kept trying. Several apologized for the rude behavior. (As none of them were responsible for the crazy, I thanked them but told them they had nothing to apologize for.)

Once the period was over and the class left, I left the meet. And I went into Google Classroom and changed the link for that period's meet. (It's a simple thing to reset the link.) So, hopefully he won't try again. I warned the regular teacher, just in case.

I wonder what that boy got out of that. I mean, to go to that much trouble to hurl insults and music at a chemistry class...