Is Your Refrigerator Running?

Friday. 6th period golf. As happens when an athletic team has a sub, they just hung out in the teacher's classroom for the period.

I've covered many of these kinds of classes. They sprawl out on the desks. A couple will ask to go and do work in other classes. But mostly they sit around and talk. And play with their phones.

As long as they aren't tearing apart the classroom, I'm pretty lenient with these kinds of classes. I become the fly on the wall, listening to all the strange things teens talk about when they have nothing in particular to do.

So, when they tried to figure out the phone number for the school, I thought nothing much of it. Someone knew it off the top of his head.

And when they started asking who various students' favorite teachers were, I listened with half an ear.

I was curious when the boy dialed his cell phone. Normally I'd put a stop to them making phone calls in class, but they had a free period, and it doesn't bother me if during a free period they call someone.

But then he got the switchboard. And he shushed the rest of them. He asked for a classroom...

"Is this Ms. A?" He got an affirmative response. "Is your refrigerator running?"

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I'm not sure what shocked me more. That the boy actually made a prank call. Or that he used that old chestnut. I mean, seriously. There's got to be a better...

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I put a stop to that nonsense. No teacher needs that sort of distraction 6th period on a Friday. And it's just silly.

But the conversation continued on in the prank call vein. Apparently, this was not the first time he had done this. He had stories of previous pranks.

Just in case you thought kids these days get up to new tricks...

Stuck on Games

8th grade computers. I'm not sure the exact title of the class, but there was a coding component to it. Supposedly they had an assignment. Which none of them were doing.

Instead, they all seemed to be on Cookie Clicker. The goal of the game, as far as I can tell, is to click on that cookie as many times as they can. Over and over and over again. I haven't discerned why.

Games come and go. Not more than a month ago, it seemed like they were all playing Agar.io. Where they're a little spot and they acquire other little spots until they become a big spot.

Anyway, I knew that they had something they were supposed to be doing, so I browbeat a few of them into checking the online assignment sheet. Dutifully, they clicked on the thing they were supposed to be doing, and they found an error message.

Great. So, I did something I never, ever do. I called the teacher.

He left his phone number in the lesson plan. Many teachers do this, but I try not to call. They're out of class for a reason, and I don't want to disturb them. But with a room full of middle schoolers who had nothing to do...

The teacher sounded awful. Clearly he was sick. I explained the situation. He said he'd check the link.

Five minutes later, the link had been updated. But it ended up taking them to exactly the same site as before (with its error message).

So, they all played Cookie Clicker. One of them figured out how to modify the code so that it clicked all by itself, and all he had to do was sit back and watch. I suppose that was kind of educational...