Hacker

Between the months of August and June, I spend more or less eight hours a day cooped up in my classroom. Relatively large, it is equipped with 30 student desks, two whiteboards, two teacher desks (neither of which my students are allowed to touch), a number of bookshelves, and a thermostat that does absolutely nothing. It is common knowledge that only the office has the power to adjust the temperature of the air that we breathe, but in an effort to give teachers some semblance of power, they installed small control boxes that have exactly two settings, cool and warm. Changing the switch to one or the other has no impact whatsoever on the air that enters the room.

Some teachers prefer to hang students’ work on the otherwise bare walls, but that tends to clutter up the place. Most of their creations look so amateurish. Of the four bulletin boards provided, I have devoted one as the “Wall of Fame” on which I may or may not hang a few examples of truly superior student accomplishments as I deem fit.

“Why didn’t you hang mine up there,” a student whines, “you gave me a 100!”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean I want to look at it all day,” I explain, “now go away.”

What I do spend a great deal of time looking at is the view from the single window of my classroom. The medium square framed by cinder blocks looks out onto the football field and the parking lot. Neither of which are particularly exciting but I still spend a tremendous amount of time looking out. I sometimes touch my fingertips to the glass longingly, like a bird in a cage. Or a mime.

Every so often, I schedule a trip to the computer lab. I don’t usually have a specific lesson in mind, but much like a beach vacation, sometimes you just need to get away.

Using the computer lab as a mini-vacation has turned out to be somewhat difficult in recent years due to administration’s perverse demands. For reasons I do not entirely understand, they now insist we provide seating charts and lesson plans and activities and worst of all, I’m supposed to email results and end products which is particularly difficult because 1) I never really know what we’re going to do at the computer lab until we get there and 2) because I put off planning something, whatever lesson I do come up with is usually worthless so we spend an enormous amount of time on a website featuring educational math games. True, some might venture to argue that math has absolutely nothing to do with my content area of reading, but those people have never taken 30 children to a computer lab.

Nevertheless, the computer lab is one of my favorite places to visit thanks to an ingenious bit of technology that I was introduced to earlier this year. In an attempt to be helpful, the Campus Instructional Technologist (code for a person the district pays to alleviate teacher’s technological frustrations) clicked on an unobtrusive icon, typed in a password, and presto, my monitor was transformed into some sort of military control center. I could suddenly see every student’s screen on my monitor in a series of neat rectangles.  

“What is this?” I gasped, in wonder.

The CIT explained that the software would allow me to immediately access any of my student’s computers, manipulating their screen as if it were my own. Apparently the intention was that teachers use it to better monitor and help their students.

I realized that this program had a much higher calling and tremendous implications for my Wednesday afternoon entertainment. I felt an immediate sense of power. With my eyes on every screen I was suddenly not only omniscient but with a click of my mouse, I was all-powerful as well. It was all I could do to not raise my arms and cackle like some maniacal evil villain. I couldn’t wait to try it out.

On this particular day, I had uncharacteristically put a substantial amount of time in the planning and coordination of a clever little assignment that would require minimal effort by me and maximum effort by the students. With plenty of free time on my hands, I began experimenting with my new toy immediately.

Suppressing a chuckle, I chose screens at random and started making subtle changes to my subjects’ projects. Moving a picture slightly. Deleting a word. Changing the background color. The student would give the screen a double take, give the mouse a good shake, and undo whatever alteration I had made to their project. Perturbed, but unscathed.

To my troublemaking students, I could be vicious; deleting, rewriting, adding, moving text and objects as served my will. The student, almost weeping with frustration would raise their hand high and demand that I come take a look at their computer. I would calmly walk over as the indignant student pointed to their possessed computer screen. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it,” I said, smugly.

But soon, it wasn’t enough to toy with my subjects indirectly, soon I realized that I could actually communicate through a message system. Choosing an unsuspecting student, I laid my sights on Sydney Mendez, a tall but unassuming girl who was philosophically waiting for the entire male population of middle school to catch up to her tremendous height. Ducking behind my computer, I selected her screen and typed “Hello Sydney.”

Skyler’s mouth dropped open and despite years of training her shoulders to hunch over to knock off a few inches, she straightened up suddenly at this extraordinary turn of events.

I would often offer helpful advice to my students. “Perhaps you should change the font color,” I might suggest, and then use my own mouse to do the task for them. “That’s better,” I would comment, as my subject’s eyes widen with wonder as they look around the room and I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from laughing.

Sometimes I would adopt a more formal approach. “Be advised, you have been selected to be monitored by a district employee.” Or, “Your conduct is being reviewed, please discontinue all illegal activity.” The student’s head swivels around the room, wondering if anyone else saw this secret message of doom. Catching the fearful gaze, “Is something wrong?” I ask casually, innocently.

I chuckle to myself as I swivel my desk chair back to the control center and select another student’s screen.