Thursday, May 13, 2021

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...

12 comments:

  1. Probably some student who is supposed to be doing remote schooling himself who would rather disrupt other classes instead of showing up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Isn't it crazy the things that makes peoples day? Someone prob got the biggest kick out of doing that. NUTS. Its like those folks that learn to hack into accounts and stuff, if they used those talents and minds for good, what could they do for the world?

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a troll. I'll never understand why people do things like that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Was he supposed to be in the class? When Heckle was on remote learning, one of his classmates kept doing a similar thing and the teacher had to constantly mute etc. Pointless.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Probably bored, on a dare, a troll, or a combination of the above. Kids eh?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ugh... I feel for you and your students.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Maybe a vendetta against the regular teacher? Or one of the students? Or Chemistry? Weird.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe chemistry. No one has a vendetta against the teacher. She's not that sort.

      Delete
  8. Such things can really get on one's nerves. Even I don't understand why some kids do such stuff. Probably, they have some issue that's leading them to behave in such disruptive manner.

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate your comments.

I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.