Thoughts from the classroom

I was on facebook the other day and read a viral post by a parent.  It said “I told my children that if they need to go to the restroom at school and their teacher says no, go anyway.  I’ll deal with the teacher.”

I’ll be totally honest and tell you that this post made me a bit angry as a teacher.  I don’t know many teachers that don’t allow students to go to the restroom just because they’re being cruel. I understand that it’s just my experience, and that the parents are working off of very limited information.  I also understand that those teachers are definitely out there. In response, I’d like to give you the teacher’s perspective, and some of the reasons we may not allow the student to go to the restroom.  Understand, however, that perspectives may vary.  One teacher’s reasons may not be the same as another’s. I can only speak for myself in this case. 

I’ll start this with an unfortunately controversial but absolutely true statement.  While some rules need to be challenged, many of them are there for very good reasons that you may not be aware of.  In a school setting, it’s usually because kids are quick to take advantage of us, and we have a responsibility to keep things safe. The perfect example was a former district of mine in a very high crime area that made a school rule against hoodies.  This came from the fact that many kids were using the combination of hoods and face masks to commit crimes on campus, such as vandalism, drug use, and attacks.  We couldn’t see their faces on camera.  I told the kids that if they didn’t want the rules, help us eradicate the thing that is causing the rules. The hoodie rule was literally to help us combat crime on campus and to keep kids safe.

One of those vandalism things was a really awful Tik-Tok challenge.  I forgot the name of it, but kids would video themselves vandalizing stuff and post it on Tik-Tok.  We had to stop allowing students to go to the restroom, and parents were FURIOUS.   Why did we stop letting them go?  Because all the toilets were being broken due to the challenge!  Quite simply, we didn’t have the restrooms for them to go to, we couldn’t keep up with fixing them.  Hire security?  With what money?  With school shootings on the rise, security had far better things to do than guard a bathroom.  Besides, we were using the money to fix the restrooms. To be brutally honest about it, girls just had to go to the nurse if they needed to take care of personal hygiene.  Yes, it was a discipline issue, but we can only be in one place at a time.  School staff is a little outnumbered.  We absolutely had our hands tied. Guess why the kids could get away with it despite the cameras everywhere?  Yep, you guessed it.  Hoodies and face masks.

Another reason I have denied a kid restroom privileges is when I knew them to be smoking pot in there.  You generally lose restroom privileges if I see you coming out higher than a kite.  We become suspicious if you go to the restroom at the same time every day, and you come back smelling like a skunk sprayed you.  I also denied a restroom visit when I knew that there were kids smoking in there and we were waiting on security.  I had one of my good kids get caught in a bust because she walked in at the wrong time and went to DAEP, I didn’t want to see that happen again.  Also, I would absolutely limit restroom passes if I found out that your kid left every single class for fifteen minutes every single day to go to the restroom.  Your kid isn’t going to the restroom at this point, they are just skipping class.  However, I can’t think of one time that I said no with no good reason behind it.  I may have asked them to wait if they could if I was giving instructions for a test or emphasizing something important, but I didn’t say no.  I’m also not letting your child go to the restroom, come back, and want to go get a drink of water five minutes later.  Take care of business while you’re out there, or go buy a water bottle. I do allow water in my class.  

Finally, one of the reasons that I may say no is that I know something is about to go down.  I’ve taught in some pretty high crime areas.  If I’ve heard rumors of something going down, I’m going to hang on to the kids to minimize the impact until I know it’s safe.  I’ve had to do this for everything from gang fights to knowing some kind of drill was about to occur.   Of course, these are things I’m not going to tell the students.  I don’t want everyone trying to leave my class to go watch, or texting their buddies to go watch also.  I have a duty to keep your child safe, after all.  Also, if there is a medical emergency in the hall, I will hold onto kids until it has passed so that there is less for paramedics to deal with.  

With all that said, here’s my general restroom policy. For a nine-week period, I give the kids a punch card that they are responsible for keeping safe.  They get nine punches for that period, allowing them to go to the restroom on average once a week.  Once I punch it the last time, I keep it.  This allows for emergencies, the girl’s periods, and just a mental break.  They learn quickly not to use it up the first week, as I warn them about it. If they don’t use the entire card, I give extra credit at the end of the nine-weeks.  This also keeps the kids from going daily.  They also can go between classes, so I feel like this is plenty of restroom opportunities. This also discourages the kids from going every period at the same time every day to skip class, since they are limited. If there are medical reasons why your kid needs to go, tell me or have the nurse tell me.  Then there will be no issues at all, I just let them go as needed.

Before you get up in arms about the girls and periods, I do absolutely remember how teenager’s periods just showed up whenever they wanted on their own schedule.  The girls know they can discreetly ask me to go to the nurse, and I will allow them to take care of themselves without question. I also keep pads and tampons in a cabinet just in case they run out. I’ve only had a problem with the guys getting mad about this once, and the resulting…description …from the girls made them very happy that they didn’t have a period and ended all the discussion. 

In the end, I think it is the rare teacher that just doesn’t let the kids go to the restroom.  If we don’t let them go, then there’s a reason.  It could really just be that we are trying to get through instructional time, which most of us try to limit to a few minutes at a time.  Believe it or not, we do know a few things about kids and attention spans, too.  Or it could be a variety of things that mean something else is going on, and we are trying to keep kids out of trouble.  If I’m keeping your kid out of the bathroom because they will live in the bathroom if I don’t, then perhaps I’m just trying to educate your kid and that needs to be a conversation you have with them. (I do document this.)  However, the most important thing of all…please don’t look at us as the enemy and assume we are being jerks.  Come have this conversation with us.  A good teacher always looks forward to working as a team with parents.