When the coronavirus pandemic hit, everything went online, including work and school. As one would expect, crazy online mishaps have started to occur more regularly because Zoom calls are now so normal in our society. And for Marc Schack, this mishap might cost him his career.
Schack is a teacher’s aide for special education students in Maryland at Shady Grove Middle School in Gaithersburg for the last twenty-one years. He had thought an online lesson with 8th graders had ended and proceeded to have some alone time to “take care of himself.” But while he was masturbating, he had no idea that the virtual call lesson was still going.
According to Schack, he was unaware the call hadn’t ended. He said, “I thought I was logged out when class was over. I had no clue that Zoom was still on. Why would I do that? That’s my job. I had no clue that Zoom was on. I mean, that’s just crazy behavior.”
“I thought I was logged out when class was over,” he said. “I had no clue that Zoom was still on. Why would I do that? That’s my job. My career. I had no clue that Zoom was on. I mean, that’s just crazy behavior.”
The 13-second clip of Schack began circulating around social media & the students at Shady Grove Middle School in Maryland were asked to stop posting the video.
In addition to being a TA Schack also performs at private parties for kids, his character name “Captain Silly Bones”, is certainly a weird nuance. An investigation of the incident is taking place.
“It was just a mistake on my part,” Schack said. He claimed to have exited the virtual classroom prior to the sex act but accidentally remained on video. “I’m only human. It was my bad.”
Schack told Bethesda Magazine that the school system called him on Monday after he had been placed on administrative leave. They told him that they had “misplaced his background check file.” This struck fear in his heart.
“Maybe they were looking to see if I had any criminal misbehavior or anything like that,” he said.
“I’m not a pervert or anything like that, you know,” Schack said. He asserted that he never meant to expose his students to the sex act or hurt them in any way.
“You gotta believe me on that …,” he said. “I thought I was in the privacy of my own home. I had no clue.”
Schack has a degree in child psychology from the University of Maryland, where he graduated in 2007. The 43-year-old has been entertaining children since 1992 when he first worked at Once Upon a Birthday. He began his teaching career in 1996, first working with autistic children and those with Downs Syndrome.
From AWM:
Shady Grove Principal Alana Murray wrote a press release confirming that an employee “seen on screen in a breakout room engaged in inappropriate behavior” during the eighth-grade history class.
MCPS spokeswoman Gboyinde Onijala told Bethesda Beat confirmed that the “behavior was sexual in nature.”
Montgomery County police have “been made aware of a video by MCPS, and we’re investigating,” confirmed Officer Rick Goodale, a spokesman for the department, on Wednesday morning.
Fox5 reported that Schack won’t face any charges. According to them, Montgomery County police said, “investigators conferred with the State’s Attorney’s Office and it was determined that the incident did not rise to the level of a criminal offense under Maryland law.”