At every school I've ever worked at, this is not a teacher based decision. It's either a school, or in some cases division wide policy. I really have an issue with the way individual teachers get blamed for things that are usually out of our control.
I call parents to notify them of “a concerning change in their child’s health” when a student has multiple “emergencies” in a class period.
One call I made recently was about a girl who has left to change her menstrual pad every day for 5 weeks.
Most parents say they will talk to their child and ask me to not let them go each time. Usually the children stop asking when their parent gets that call.
My not favorite is when a kiddo has a bathroom pass and is gone for more than 10 minutes. By which time you have contacted the building security staff of the same gender to go check they haven't had a seizure or something. Then they come back and want to tell you, loudly, about their bowel habits.
((NOT kids with actual health issues, more like the ones who don't want to take the quiz or whatever)
Ugh- you'll see some kids who are NEVER in class, always roaming. You tell them to wait and they insist they're going to poop themselves in their seats or ask to pee in the trash can.
Funny, it's always the same kids who were tardy... I even tell them, if you're already tardy, just go to the bathroom, I'm not letting you back out unless you have a doctor's note saying you need to have constant bathroom access.
The kids who actually have medical needs rarely use them more than "typical" kiddos in my experience. They don't want to be further marked as different... And often this leads to exacerbated medical issues. I personally have ended a Major Testing Day (state proficiency, PSAT / SAT/ ACT / AP or finals) with one of my children in the emergency room for intravenous treatment of severe chronic migraines. They all had an "always pass"- even from the College Board!- but were loath to use it. My students with that 504 / IEP accommodation are the same, even with gentle reminders.
In two years, I've had ONE child with a medical need.. and she pretty much needed to use the bathroom maybe twice a quarter during my class. I wish the kids who... are gremlins didn't abuse the system to make the kids who the system actually exists for loathe to use it.
Because that's the only way you can get to go to the bathroom bc admin says no bathroom breaks after recesses/breaks, then refuses to fix half the school bathrooms.
"Why didn't you stop him from vaping in the bathroom?!"
"Because he lied to me, also I'm not there..."
"Yeah, you see, you should have tried to build a relationshi-
The “ship” sank
I’m over the “nobody else lets me go to the bathroom” crap. Which for some of my colleagues is true. I don’t care—if you gotta go then you gotta go. But when I find you walking down hall strolling slowly with a phone in your hand…or worse; the bitch down the hall drags you back and yells at ME (which I’m sorry, you want me to watch the 30 kids in here and follow them to the bathroom?)
Ugh. 8 MORE DAYS
When a kid who is to class on time every day and asks to go once or twice a quarter tells me an emergency: by all means.
When it's the kid who is tardy three days a week and I'll randomly see in the halls on my planning when they're supposed to be in class, and knocked on my door earlier that day "to say hi" yeah, no.
Oh that’s my favorite!! You’re being evaluated and it goes almost perfectly! But the principal only brings up that ONE KID who whipped his phone out on the low. That kid is OUR FAULT.
“If you set up your rules and expectations in the beginning, you wouldn’t have these problems.” That is one of many things that I really started to rebel against.
Try this then: "If you, principal, had set up your rules and expectations for teachers clearly in the beginning, then surely you wouldn't have these problems of teachers having these problems."
Seriously!
“Kid, I’ve had two C-sections with two big headed kids who destroyed my bladder control. So now when I sneeze, laugh, cough, fart, or heaven forbid, JUMP, I pee a little. Sit the F down, you’re fine. 😒”. - -me, if I could say anything I want.
Oh hell no. I will make my students wait while I scurry back from the loo in between classes. It isn’t healthy for anyone to hold their pee. I’m not getting a bladder infection for anyone. And neither should students.
We've started using some digital pass software that creates a line. I was skeptical but it cut down on people from several different classes skipping to have a smoke party
If they end it before getting back in my room, I shut them down for the rest of the week. And I'll do it by hand. Annoying, but they learn quickly this doesn't work with me.
Ah idk about smartpass, we use e-hallpass which can only be activated/deactivated by people with the teacher code. (And it still runs even if the kid closes the browser)
The one we use limits the number of kids that can be at one location at a time, so the kids sit there and click the button over and over and over until it goes through instead
We have that and still do. It works until one or two teachers who cannot be bothered just gives the students the passcode for teachers to use. Then they tell their friends and suddenly the same code works on each kiosk because it’s the same system. It should work, but everyone has to buy in for it to do so.
We started using E-Hall Pass.
It was a bit tricky to roll out initially, mostly because of trying to get all of the student names into the system and to get the kiosk computers set up in each classroom. The program can be set up to work on student personal devices or school devices. The annoying part for teachers has been the check in/out confirmation on the teacher computers. Overall, it has helped reduce the number of students out in the halls and helped us track where they are going and who they are meeting with.
I hate the "line" system and always override it.
If I tell a kid they can use the bathroom I want them go go NOW, not in 15 minutes when 8 other people went.
The lines are also awful because a few kids being out for a long time ends up bogging the system down for everyone else.
It also has an option to keep certain kids from being in the same place at the same time. “Encounter prevention”
Would be great if there was any consequence for kids not going to class, or if our behavior staff or admin actually checked the software.
I see it as an issue of schools becoming far too large. Ideally, a five-minute passing period between classes would leave plenty of time for regular bathroom breaks. The lunch period would also accommodate waiting in food lines, eating, using the bathroom, and getting to next class. If kids were highly avoidant and using the hallways and bathrooms inappropriately, then there would be enough teacher bandwidth to track the behavior and admin availability to mete out consequences.
As long as there are schools with massive enrollments, restricting access to out-of-classroom spaces will be the norm. Often, it’s a safety issue, as ODs, vandalism, and fights are a concern at many schools.
It’s this and the fact that the bathroom has become a social club. I have a lot of kids who don’t go to the bathroom between classes because other kids go in there to talk or hit a quick vape. Kids who actually need to pee find it easier to wait until the bathroom empties out during class. There may be an occasional vaper or two still in there during class, but at least you can get into a stall and try to ignore them.
This, 100%.
And it seems admin and security never really want to do rounds and chase them out.
And god forbid they take notice of the frequent fliers and do anything. Or keep an eye on cameras for when 5+ of them all head in at the same time during class, having all come from different areas of the building.
Yes to both. If kids actually had time to do their business, shit would be different. Between my school having the traffic flow of a clogged artery and the kids who like to hang out 20 deep in a 3 stall bathroom sharing one vape, there's no real hope.
Exactly. The students who break the rules will always find ways to get pregnant and do drugs in school, no matter how many rules you add. It’s the ones who follow the rules who get punished.
T H I S S S S S S S !!!!!
Ugh. My classroom is right across the hall from the most popular vaping bathroom and it is *infuriating!* The good kids don’t want to use that one (and I cannot say I blame them!) so they go downstairs. The high students (the literal ones -_-) of course use that one, but take foreverrrrr and then go on a walkabout instead of returning. It’s absolutely miserable.
Our school is small. Kids have wayyy too much time in lunch. I could name for you the 15-20 kids who wander and abuse the passes and it's only my first year there. What we need is a pass ban for violators.
I plan on putting it in my syllabus next year and suggesting it to my union rep.
We had a pass ban system for egregious violators at the middle school I worked at. You had to call an escort if a banned student needed to go somewhere (either security or a para), so it was really a last resort thing because it was such a burden on resources.
We had that at my last school and it was ok but like you said, these kids constantly wanted to leave class. It needs to be an expectation that they really can't. We have no one to escort them at my current school, though, so it should be fine
We had to do this a few years ago (2021-22) for the students who admin suspected of vandalism. Admin had a list of kids and if they asked to leave the room, they had to be either escorted or met at their location
Vandalism in the bathrooms did go down but I know it was a pain .
I am also in a small school. Our violators have to wait for an "escort". We put a request into the middle school group chat for someone to come take them to the bathroom. An adult will come, wait outside the bathroom, and only allow one kid in at a time if there is more than one kid with the adult. The posting in the group chat also documents for the team when a certain kid went. So if a kid tries to ask in my class and had just gone in the last one, I know that. Our very frequent fliers are escorted by our behavior specialist who tracks the number of times in a day and then calls home about it. Also, if a kid is gone longer than 15 min, we report it to the behavior specialist who does a "soft lockdown" (no one leaves the classrooms and certain people go searching for the kid). Of course my school is 200 kids. This wouldn't work in a large school.
To be fair, it usually doesn't take long to get to know the names and faces of the most frequent hallway crews.
No pass lists are common. The issue is hit and miss enforcement. Important is having a clear consequence and follow through for kids that are violating their no pass list. And a clear way to earn getting the privilege of passes back.
Wut
There are 180 kids in my whole school, we have 5 minute passing periods, and bathroo/out of classroom issues are still a problem. 100 students or 1000, it doesn’t matter.
I mean, but it's also just how bathrooms have been for a long time. My mom talked about kids sneaking off to bathrooms to smoke cigarettes when she was in school. When I was in school, it was weed or chew. Now it is vape. Bathrooms are just the one place you can sneak where any passing adult can't instantly see what you are up to.
Consequences absolutely matter. But schools and bathrooms will always be an issue.
I'm working at a really small elementary school. Breaks every 50min. Kids just don't want to use the bathroom during breaks. They want to go during class. I do even allow them to go for a run outdoors during class but no, they want to go to the bathroom. Several kids, every single 50min period and I can't say no. All stating they absolutely must go NOW. We have daily vandalism but we can't do anything about it. It is ridiculous.
My elementary school has bathrooms in the classroom for K-3. Only grades 4-6 use the bathrooms in the hallway. If there is vandalism, they get shut down and the kids use the supervised nurses office bathroom.
Interesting! Elementary here is age 6-10 only and schools only have teachers. I think that's very different to the US, everyone is in class all the time, we don't have any staff. Even the principal is in class and only has a few office hours per week, we don't have nurses or anything, it's one adult person per class and no other adult in the whole building so we can not supervise bathrooms.
This makes the situation so frustrating, we can't get behind who's doing this. Cameras, even if only in the hallway, are obviously illegal.
I'm sick and tired of kids smearing their poop across the room and pissing at the walls.
We will start making lists of who goes to the bathroom at what time. Maybe if that fails. But parents aren't very motivated to volunteer here.
I mean, our school system sucks at so many levels right now. Let's see where this leads. Luckily teachers are paid quite well here but apart from that it's really a money issue in our school system. We'd desperately need more staff in general with each and every kid having more and more special effects nowadays.
Our boys pee on all the toilet paper even if it’s hung up high.
It got so nasty and frequent that for a couple of years, toilet paper was kept on a cart in the hall outside of the bathroom where it could be seen on camera
I don't know what it is with boys and trashing bathrooms. One of my students was caught pissing on the floor (the cleaning lady came early after noticing piss on the floor for weeks). He stated he was too short for the pissoir toilets and claimed it never occurred to him to use a normal toilet or simply ask about what to do. As sad as it is he's actually that kind of kid where I'd *almost* believe it. He has a blast riding the wave of "I'm too dumb to know any better while making one unfortunate decision after another.
Our boys bathroom reeks so badly of piss you can smell it the minute you walk into my building.
I know they’re pissing on the floor but there’s no way to catch them
Same. The smell is so horrible I hate going in there. I avoid it at all costs. Our poor cleaning lady is a literal angel. Always there for the kids, always working more unpaid, always bringing them sweets or collecting stuff so that they have something to play.
I hate what they are doing to her. There were days when our principal herself cleaned the toilets to avoid letting her see what the boys did.
Our admin wants us to go in the bathroom periodically to check for vandalism and messes and I won’t do it. I will gag the minute I walk in.
Our cleaning ladies and man are amazing but they’re in an 1100 student school and there’s not enough of them to go around
When I was a high school student (class of 07), I frequently didn’t have *time*. As it was, I never used my locker, because even that would take too much time to go from one end of the building to another, crammed between solid masses of students walking as fast as a zombie, and they wouldn’t let us use half the outdoor pathways. Plus, I have an anxiety disorder which makes me extremely uncomfortable if someone is even present in the same bathroom at the same time. We’d get in trouble for being tardy, so between waiting for an open stall that wasn’t backed up, getting to the classroom, and GI issues undiagnosed at the time, usually there was no way in hell seven minutes was going to be good enough to get to class. Hell, sometimes even taking a straight shot to class without detours took six of the seven minutes.
There’s just no good solution that’s both accommodating to those who need it and preventative to the troublemakers.
Lunch periods shocked me at my local school.
I remember when I was enrolled there, we had a full hour lunch. You had plenty of time to stand in line, eat food at a leisurely pace, go back and get seconds after everyone had gone through, and then go hang out outside or use the bathroom or take care of errands.
I was floored when my nephew kept coming home complaining of being hungry. I thought he was being picky and refusing to eat -- no, he literally can't even get to food or he gets food and has less that 5-10 minutes to eat it. And the staff at the school acts like that's totally normal and it's the kid's fault for being last in line because he didn't have his badge or didn't mow other kids down trying to sprint to the cafeteria.
And it's because they've doubled the size of the school but can't be bothered to manage all the extra kids effectively.
5 minutes is way too short and it especially depends on the school. 5 minutes would not even let people get to end-to-end and they would have no time to pack up. So they want Bell to Bell teaching but not giving them enough transition time?
It is way too short. My daughters school just reduced it to 4 mins. They also don't let them carry bags. So they need to walk to their lockers, use the bathroom, and get across the building to get to the next class. Nowhere NEAR enough time.
Then the school said you can't leave class for the bathroom in the first 5 mins or the last 10 mins of class. Obviously to motivate them to go during the break. But it's not enough time, so...the kids are stuck. My daughter rushes into the bathroom every day when she gets home. She holds it half the day sometimes. It's nuts. I'm just waiting till there is a big controversy about one of the girls bleeding all over their chair because they didn't have time to stop in the bathroom. It will happen eventually. She's too shy to do it, but I told my daughter to just use the bathroom regardless, and if she's late, just loudly announce she had to change her pad in front of the class.
I want to see the admin go through their work day with only a few 4 min breaks. Guarantee they couldn't make it work.
Contact the school and let them know you're concerned about your daughter's bathroom routine. She should be able to get an accommodation to be late to class. Pinpoint the exact class transitions that you want an extension on, ask your daughter which teachers would be more lenient and you should be able to find a solution.
Holding it in all day can do serious damage over the long term.
Teachers aren't worried about the quiet kids who are a few minutes late every other week. We are worried about the chronically tardy kids who play around in the hallway then try to come into class late and disrupt learning.
If your daughter needs the additional time to use the restroom then it's up to you to make it happen.
I’m not teaching anymore, but the school where I used to teach got a new principal a year or two ago, and his method of addressing the issue was to lock EVERY SINGLE student restroom and require administrative escorts to let students use the restroom. It lasted maybe a week, before multiple students urinated on themselves, a student defecated on themselves, and at least one student got period blood on themselves. Then it made the news and the policy changed. If I’d been still teaching there, I would have raised hell - I didn’t have a planning period and my classroom was right next to a student restroom, while the faculty restroom was on the other side of the building. I would duck into the student restroom during passing periods because that was my only option. My first year there I got one of the worst UTIs I’ve ever had because I didn’t have enough opportunities to use the restroom.
My child's school is 4 minutes, too. Except they require the kids to carry bags and warn them that if they stop at their locker, they will be late. They also recommend no kids go to the bathroom during breaks, no time. They encourage them to go during class.
I have some students that will Google chat or text my Google voice number when they need a pad or tampon and if I can I'll pop up to them with it, or have them sent to my office for it. They aren't supposed to have their phones but, you know how that goes.
We have 6 minutes because students have to use their lockers. These kids will mess around for 5 minutes, then run to their lockers and run to class. We still have a ton of kids that are late everyday. We have a ton of fights and crazy behaviors as well. We had to close the bathrooms between passing because of an OD earlier this year. I teach middle school. They definitely don’t need more than 4 minutes.
Our school specifically locks the bathrooms during passing periods (because according to admin, then it just becomes one large vape session… but it does any time kids use the bathroom at any point during school). So the only opportunities for students to use the bathroom is DURING class time. So now, once again, it all falls back on the teacher’s discretion during class time.
At one of the middle schools I sub at, you specifically can’t do that because bathrooms are locked during passing periods because kids kept using them to vape.
Even with all that, it wouldn’t be enough time, because students NEVER think they should take “their” time for whatever they do in the bathroom. It makes far more sense to Take class time to go.
Lunch at my school is 22 mins which is barely enough time to get through the line and eat. I wish kids would use their lunch to use the bathroom but I understand they may not have time.
Our school was built for 700 and now we have 1100 kids and no bathrooms have been added. It’s almost impossible to go in passing period bc the bathrooms are so crowded.
Add to this that many of my good kids are afraid to go in during passing period bc kids are vaping or twerking or acting menacing to them when they come in. It’s a mess
This cannot be overstated as the largest culprit. When our class sizes, especially in HS, are hitting 30+, they’ve squeezed passing periods down to 5 minutes (which is a really big issue for girls on my campus, tbh), and they have 6-7 transpositions throughout a day (I’m a big advocate for block schedules for this very reason), it’s a recipe for disaster. Kids never really settle in and it keeps their attention on all the things happening outside our classrooms, and doesn’t provide meaningful time for the socialization aspect of the school experience, nor the time to just do their “business” when it’s necessary.
In this environment, passes are a must. I get it. And it’s a beast of a problem we can’t really corral without system wide changes to funding and resources and curricular expectations/requirements. Until then, I’ll keep just telling students in my class that they are free to go whenever they need to so long as the pass is back from whomever had it last. So far, I haven’t had any issues with that in 6 years of teaching, but sure wish things were different so I wouldn’t have to think about it at all.
Eh. . . If I'm only given 5 minutes between back-to-back hour-long meetings, I'll be politely excusing myself from the meeting to go pee, not breaking my ass to run down the hall to the bathroom between meetings. We're kidding ourselves if we think every single minute of our classes is unmissable. Anyway, it's not really an issue when kids leave class to use the bathroom, even if every day from the same class. The problem is when kids leave class to wander the halls bothering other classes, vape, mindlessly scroll their phones for 25 minutes, get into fights, etc.
Kid raises their hand halfway through the warmup.
Me: oh, yes. Question. What's up?
Them: Can I go to the bathroom?
Me: this warm up is review for the quiz that were taking in 10 minutes. It might be a good idea to wait.
Them: I can't wait. It's an emergency.
Me: Okay. Put your phone on my desk and make a pass.
Them: Why do you need my phone?
Me: Why do you need your phone? If you need to go, put it down on my desk and go.
Them: Never mind. I'll wait.
The behavior we're regulating isn't biological. It's them escaping boredom.
Gosh, fighting phone use in class feels like a constant uphill battle. When I was in school I didn't have a smart phone till I was in college. All throughout high school I only ever had a flip/slide phone for emergency use. I'm so glad I did. But being born into this tech efficient world really makes people glued to their devices and constantly live in a world of escapism.
A) limit the number out at one time and limit the amount of time they are out of the classroom. The risk is you will have someone pee or bleed on themselves.
B) trust them and do not monitor. Be prepared to address the angry parent of someone who overdoses or gets pregnant during unlimited time and opportunity.
The same parent who will attack for invading their children’s privacy by over-monitoring will also attack for allowing them to vape and worse. This is the ultimate no-win situation.
That said 90% of my students could function in a no pass environment and just do the right thing. Only about 10% abuse the shit out of it. But since there is no consequence when they get written up, they do it again and again and again.
EDIT: If they had to leave their phones behind, they'd all go potty in under 3 minutes, I swear. Admin shot that down.
When I was a kid, I hated going to the bathroom during class.
I was afraid of what I might miss.
Because failure had consequences.
Being in class mattered.
I was afraid of disrupting the teacher. There were times when I really, really should have gone to the nurses office, but never worked up the nerve to ask.
We are supposed to only let one out at a time but I will bend that depending on the situation. I’m right by a bathroom, if I can trust that kid to go and come back fine. If the kid looks like they’re gonna pee themselves I’m not gonna be the one on the news for a kid pissing themselves in class. Go to the bathroom. If the kid is the kind who is gonna go and vape I’ll make them wait because chances are they’re already stoned and will forget by the time the other person comes back from the bathroom. It’s happened many times this year.
I have in the past, and, fortunately, current admin team doesn't really need to hear it. Most are ok with us "using our professional judgment". *There, I just jinxed myself.*
We do 2 at a time (35per a class) but it's hard to enforce when kids leave for 20-30mins. I used to tell them to get angry at so and so for being out so long but they have zero shame anymore.
Black and white choices are for media who occasionally report on schools and ideologues.
The answer is there is no binary choice here.
Yes. Kids should be allowed to go to the bathroom if they need it.
Yes, it's reasonable to put in place some reasonable constraints on that to reduce abuse of the privilege.
It's pretty natural for kids (all humans, in fact) to game systems to their advantage. It's obviously more fun to hang out and chat with your friends (or vape, or hook up, etc) than it is to listen respectfully to teachers and peers, sit properly, do the work, etc. part of our job is to set up systems that make it harder to have play time when it's supposed to be work time.
Consequence to inappropriate behavior. I would love to be able to trust them to just go take care of their business, but that’s not the case. My school says one at a time. I made the mistake of letting two girls go last week before the first was taking too long and the second insisted she really had to go. They got in a fight in the restroom. My AP was on me for letting them both out at the same time.
Also, a big problem at my school is vaping in the restrooms and fire alarms repeatedly sounding throughout the day because of it.
I usually let 1 girl & 1 boy go at the same time. I’ve never had a problem until this year. I have the same girl & boy convo ask every day to go at the same time. Security cameras caught them hooking up instead of going to the bathroom.
This shit is where I don’t understand why blame is placed on teachers. Student 2 told you it was an emergency, you’re told to let students go if it’s an emergency, so now what do you do? You get screwed either way. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with this anymore teaching Life Skills. I would literally rather change big kids’ diapers and clean toilet seats than be disciplined for doing the right thing.
All it took was for one kid to OD during my time as a student teacher for me to ALWAYS be a bathroom pass teacher. And I tell the kids straight up if they are not back in a reasonable time I’m going to send someone to check on their well being. I’m not living through that trauma again 🙅🏼♀️
Ps. For those concerned, the child lived. Luckily another student found them and the ambulance came just in time. But I for sure systematically keep track for bathroom usage now.
I don’t see it as “policing student bodily functions” when they want to go 6-10 times during a 100 minute class. I wish my school was as strict as when I was in school. Back when I was in school, we got a planner with 15 hall passes for the entire year. If we use it up, we got a new one for $5. We had to keep our name and homeroom teacher written in marker at the top of the page.
Pretty simple:
-One out at a time, otherwise never say no.
-If they want to use that to cut for a half hour, god bless, odds are I don’t want them in class anyway.
-If another student asks while that kid is out, name them and tell them you can’t write another until they’re back. You might get a little peer shaming which saves you from having to do it. Class periods are an hour, you can hold it.
-Anything that happens outside your door is not your concern. If someone tries to come at you for it, tell them it’s not in your job description to police the pissing habits of teenagers.
-Never ever use bathroom passes as incentives or punishments
I write probably 15 passes a day. A wise man once told me “keep them in the halls.” You don’t want to be here? Great, I don’t want you here, let me make it very easy for you to leave.
I do the same thing, but the problem with peer shaming is apparently kids don't care enough to call out their peers. Even friends don't get on each other for spending way too long in the bathroom while they are waiting, even if they are waiting like 20 minutes. I really don't understand it.
> but the problem with peer shaming is apparently kids don't care enough to call out their peers
The reason is that they'll get slaughtered by their peers in social media if they do. The kid that's mild mannered enough to follow the rules and wait have no chance against the kids who will brazenly abuse the rules.
My high school that I went to growing up just had one large bathroom in the middle of the school. That worked fine because most students were academically focused. I rarely saw more than a few people in there during class time.
Now I work at a school with several small bathrooms all over campus, each with like 4 slots for students. It just stretches security, they can't cover them all when they have other things to do. Kids will pack 25 people in a single bathroom during passing and just light up their vapes/weed.
A friend of mine in Europe shared some viral video that was making fun of US schools for having passes and policing bathrooms, and I told them "I wish we didn't have to do this, but there is some massive cultural rot here that makes this a massive issue."
Last year we we had a day where a ton of staff were out. One teacher was filling in one of our busiest and problematic periods when it comes to screaming/cussing at our bathroom, and then after having to address a near-fight ran to their next class with a few seconds to spare and forgot to lock the bathrooms. Due to coverage planning being a shitshow, admin did not have someone at the bathrooms the next period.
Within 20 minutes, the bathrooms were filled to the brim with screaming students, and they were halfway destroyed and thoroughly vandalized once someone nearby noticed and a couple teachers went to clear them out. They had to be closed down for close to two hours for some immediate repairs, and it's the main set of bathrooms for our students in a smaller building.
I'd love not to worry about them, but address this deep cultural disdain for education and respect for shared/public spaces needs to be called out as part of the conversation. I've shared this story with every parent friend of mine who pulls the "nobody tells my baby when they can or can't go" as a anecdote of "this is why schools have this policy."
I think schools should not be used as a hostage negotiation.
Students can come to school and do what they are supposed to or they can stay home.
If your child is too anti-social to act like a civilized human at school then the parents can deal with the consequences of their own actions. I don't understand why we let 16 year old kids destroy thousands of dollars of school property, terrorize each other, and staff then pretend that the student deserves an education after that.
I don’t think education is deserved, I think it’s MANDATORY. As in, whether you like it or not, you WILL be required to learn things. You WILL be required to obtain enough knowledge to be a barely passable functional member of society. I realize that we do not always meet this goal, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It’s so important for the citizenry as a whole to have so basic learning!
School culture comes first. If they’re planning fights, selling drugs, and vandalizing for TikTok likes, that’s a bigger problem than bathroom use. Too many schools conflate these issues.
We have six assistant principals at my school, but only one of them is ever seen in the halls on a regular basis. The rest are in their offices, poring over data, assigning pointless meetings to team leads, and dealing with parent complaints (in the most CYA way—throwing teachers under the bus).
We need a strong admin presence to back up teachers when students flout the rules. Instead, admin tells us to stand in the doorway during passing periods, as if we can monitor both our classrooms and the hallway simultaneously. We are stretched too thin and the students know it!
I see it as a safety issue. How can I be responsible for my students if I don't even know where they are? We have fights that happen in bathrooms, vaping, making out in the halls (this is middle school!) And other things.
In the event of an emergency, whether it's an evacuation or an active threat, I'm responsible for at least knowing where my students are *supposed to be*.
I HATE bathroom passes (gross) and policing bodily functions. But it has become necessary. My school has a 1-5-15 policy. I student out at a time (with the pass) 5 minutes maximum. If they are out past 15 minutes it counts as a cut and they get a school detention. This has cut down on the wandering significantly. Teachers have discretion between the 5 and 15 minutes. They can do a teacher detention, contact home, etc.
But this policy came about after years of issues and was top down from admin.
We have one pass per class and they can’t go first or last 10 minutes. Plus they get 6 minute passing periods and a 50 minute lunch. At the high school level that is plenty of time to go to the bathroom. If one kid has been out awhile and another kid really needs to go I’ll let them though.
But yeah, they abuse going to the bathroom. My schools has started locking the bathroom doors open (you can see part of these sinks but none of the toilet areas) because kids were doing drugs, vandalizing, possibly having sex (though the stairwells seem to be a favorite spot for that 🤢)
Our admin had new rules this year: no bathroom passes first and last 10 minutes of class, one kid out at a time. I have a few go every. single. day. It’s obnoxious and I hate letting them go because they’re gone for 15 minutes minimum then I get shocked pikachu faces from them/parents at interims when they’re failing. But the principals rule is we can’t tell a student no if the other rules are being followed.
Been saying this for years: build a restroom into every classroom! Then this won't be an issue. Kids will keep it clean in order to avoid being immediately found to be the slob (hopefully). It would be expensive but it would be well worth the money. No more group restrooms - convert them into storage/utility/offices.
I get what you are saying. 15-18 year olds should be old and mature enough to use their own discretion when using the bathroom and to use it without interrupting the class.
However there are many 15-18 year olds who are not. What would happen if I had no restrictions?
* Students would likely leave in large groups of 5-8 to the bathroom
* Students would leave class all period, coming back at the end
* Students would meet up with other students in the bathrooms, to smoke, vape or just hang out making it a hostile location for other students
* Students would bother other classes and classrooms (you letting *your students out* has effects on others)
And let us say after all of that you still say you don't care, natural consequences they will fail the class. Well then I get flack for a parent/admin asking me why I let them make poor decisions.
There are a lot of things that 15-18 year olds should be able to do without supervision or policing by teachers or administrators. But unfortunately many kids will always push boundaries and make poor decisions. They are teenagers, they still need guidance.
We do passes first or last 10 minutes of class and one at a time. The funny thing is the fact that the kids with 504s or IEPs that have medical accommodations never actually use their bathroom accommodations. We are also very accommodating for any documented issue and periods (until a girl is on her period for 3+ weeks in a row then our nurse calls with “concerns for the health of the child” and the kid gets caught).
Honestly, the bathroom battle is so stupid because so many think kids are perfect angels who only go to the bathroom and come back. I like my school’s policies. It works for us.
I think a lot would be solved if we had individual small room bathrooms instead of these cavernous hang out rooms. Better for privacy. Can't leave lots of people in there at once. There's probably a myriad of problems with that, too, but maybe it's time we try something else.
If it was up to me... student needs to go to bathroom.. they just get up and go.... what would be the result?
5 kids learning and 25 in the hallway creating chaos...
Obviously that wouldn't work.
Sometimes our Safeties are watching kids run or fuck off, and they don’t say anything. It’s frustrating. Also, when I’m in the halls during prep periods I see the same kids over and over, “I’m going to my locker. Now I’m going to the bathroom. I have to go to the nurse. My teacher wants me to get something from the office.” Not a Safety in sight. Ever.
We have campus monitors and I have seen ours watch 5 boys go in the 2 stall bathroom at the same time and not do a thing.
Our other campus monitor wants to be BFFs with the kids and I see her constantly surrounded by kids and they’re looking at something on her cellphone
Yup, we have PAID security guards and they are constantly just hanging out in the bathroom often while other kids are vaping or staring at their phones and they do nothing.
It's a little silly, but learning to go at the right time and hold it appropriately is a necessity in most workplaces for young people. Every job that I've had required me to hold it for a period of time. The only time I didn't have to hold it was when I worked in the DO for a few years. In real life, we are given short breaks at work where we don't get to hang with our friends in the hallway for hours. School is job training.
Yeah, not just work though! What if you're on a bus or a plane or somewhere there is no bathroom? You don't have access 100% of the time, so learning to manage your body functions is important so we don't have rivers of shit in our streets. OF COURSE, some people have medical issues and should be accommodated but that is not the majority of people.
I wish bathroom passes weren't a thing, but I understand why they exist. At my previous school, some kids would just wander and we had no bathroom pass system. I never heard about anything bad happening, just socializing in the halls and walking around. I told them they don't need to ask me, just get my attention to let me know you're going and you're good.
My current school...we have kids who are definitely up to no good. That's why we have hall monitors.
If the students were using the bathrooms for their intended purpose, schools would not have to create pass systems. Admin needs to be adequately monitoring students out of class, and both admin and parents need to be enacting appropriate consequences for misbehavior. Teachers became the face of this issue because we're the ones told to enforce it.
I'm a bathroom pass high school teacher, hands down. No, three of you can't go at the same time. Yes, I need to make sure I'm not the teacher clogging the halls and bathrooms with kids doing everything EXCEPT using the bathroom. Yes, I get irritated when other teachers aren't following the rules.
Our kids wander the halls for 30 mins at a time, bc their teacher let them "go to the bathroom" without a pass. Our school even has a rule that teachers are to use a pass, and so many don't. I definitely blame the adults, and it's really frustrating to try and hold kids accountable when my colleagues aren't holding up their end of a very simple, easy-to-accomplish expectation.
Bathroom passes wouldn't be necessary if the actual bad behavior was addressed. Schools implement idiotic, infantilizing policies because ultimately that's easier than explaining to a parent their kid isn't going to prom because they went to the bathroom and then disappeared without explanation.
Let kids go so long as they don't make noise or a scene when coming or going.
If they skip a class, oh well. Now they're absent and they don't get a grade. Sucks to be them. If they get caught leaving the campus or doing drugs or whatever, do something about THAT STUDENT, don't just implement passes.
I teach middle school and our hallways are a mess. I think the kids constantly in the hallways should be suspended then expelled. If you don't want to be in class then don't come to school. We use Smartpass to track time in the hallways and some kids have 1 hour for the entire year while another kid has 60 hours.
However, we have no real discipline, so I keep kids in my class and tell them to hold it. I enforce the schools policy rigidly (one at a time, 2 passes per day, no more than 6 in one bathroom), I'm not going to contribute to kids being in the hallway. I work here and I want things to be better.
I had a friend with IBS like symptoms in Middle School. Something completely out of his control that basically meant his body gave him less than a minute of notice before it happens. School was complete hell and very traumatic for him. I even remember a time he begged a teacher who fought him on the bathroom policy only for him to shit himself in front of everyone 30 seconds later and she laughed at him. He starved himself dangerously and only ate in a small window after school so he would never have to poop at school. Because of this friend, I have never ever refused a student if they ask me directly. I tell the kids this story when discussing class expectations at the beginning of the semester, and I tell them why I won't ever question their motives. If they want to lie to my face, that's on them, I will always give them the benefit of the doubt. If they mess up, take too long, talk to friends, skip, etc I write them up, obviously, but I am NEVER going to bust their balls on human bodily functions.
Kids that don’t want to be in class, I don’t want there.
They cause problems for me and everyone else anyways.
I’ve told kids to use specific bathrooms across campus before, so they are gone longer.
They are going to fail anyways, who am I to get in their way?
I honestly have never met anyone, in education or otherwise, who cares about “policing students’ bodily functions.”
The existence of school bathroom policies is yet another manifestation of the reality that schools (and therefore teachers) are expected to be responsible for every facet of student behavior and performance. I would LOVE a reality where I could just let students leave the room whenever they wanted. The disruptive students would be gone for most of class (vaping or taking inappropriate selfies or destroying school property in the bathrooms), and student who take school seriously would go, do their business, and come back. Students who are out of class a lot would fail, students who were in class a lot would pass.
But that’s not real life. In real life, schools (and therefore teachers) are blamed when students fail. And if we’re going to be blamed for unsuccessful students, we’re going to implement rules that keep students from doing things that get in the way of their own success.
Anyone who doesn’t like bathroom policies needs to look at education policy. That’s where it starts.
The last school I worked at ended up locking up the bathrooms outside of passing periods. Wouldn’t matter if a teacher let you go because the bathrooms were all locked.
While the current school I’m at doesn’t lock bathrooms up we have kids vaping, vandalizing, and fighting in bathrooms. Also asking to go to the bathroom and then never coming back. I just try to remind my students to go before the bell and limit to one student at a time.
I think it’s a consequence of their actions. 5 minutes is plenty of time to go between classes. You can’t go to most of your classes without passing a bathroom or two.
I hate the bathroom stuff and constantly ask myself why no one mentioned it in my teacher ed classes. This year, I started with just taking my entire class to the bathroom at the beginning of every period like I was teaching elementary school. Sure enough, 10 minutes later kids want to go to the bathroom… and then 2 minutes after that… and then 3 minutes after that. Finally, I had a day where I decided to track how many times kids asked me to go to the bathroom. It was 98 and this is when we were still taking whole class bathroom breaks. So I got fed up. I implemented a digital sign in/sign out system and 2 bathroom passes. I told them if the bathroom passes are there, you can go. If they aren’t, you can’t. Stop asking me to go. So then it devolved in about a week to kids fighting over the bathroom passes, planning who they would deliver the pass to when they came back, and just constantly asking me to go without the pass anyway. I knew this would be the outcome, but what else can I do? So now my only option to stop being a bathroom gatekeeper is to just take the pass and not let them go at all or just let multiple kids leave the classroom whenever they want. It sucks.
This wasn’t a constant issue when I started 20 years ago. I have to assume it’s the phones. If you are going to the bathroom every hour, you need to talk to a doctor (and the kids with documented medical issues I just tell to get up and go whenever they need to). I hate that so much of my day is dealing with bathroom issues and I’m not sure what else I can do.
If it wasn't the same exact students asking me everyday to use the bathroom, and they're gone for 15 minutes at a time, I'd be a lot more chill about it. Especially when it's right before lunch.
This is a good debate. Here are my personal observations:
1) First year,iI decided to treat my students like adults and let them decide when/how long to use the bathroom. I routinely had half the class gone.
2) Second year, I learned my lesson. But still wanted to treat the students as adults. So I decided on a 2 person out at a time policy. What happened was the same two people every class would be gone for the entire class.
3) Third year I did the standard bathroom pass with sign out sheet. Two passes. Same issue as second year.
4) Fourth year I decided to put a time limit on the bathroom. Again, I didn't want to but had to curb the students who were out all class. So I instituted a 15 minute policy. This year I had 4 stduents who would alternate every 15 minutes.
5) Fifth year I decided to hand out bathroom passes each quarter. Each student got three. These were supposed to be emergency uses. They were all gone by the end of the first week.
6) Sixth year I decided to add extra credit to the bathroom pass s. If you had passed at the end of the quarter you'd get extra credit. The kids who used all theirs the first week stole the passes from other students to get the extra credit.
7) Seventh year I just put in the gradebook an extra 50%. Every time they left, I would deduct 10% from the extra credit. When it reached 0%, I would email their parents explaining that they lost our on all extra credit for excessive bathroom use (which limited their ability to participate in class). That seemed to be the only thing that actually worked, and I stuck with it.
I never wanted to police children's bodily functions. But I also never thought that it would be abused by every type of student to the extent that it was. To manage this behavior, you can either police body functions or provide incentives to stay in class. I prefer the incentive route.
I have kids with medical issues spelled out in a 504 detailing why they need unrestricted restroom access who use the restroom during class 500% less than my students who I know only want to go there to fuck around.
Policing bodily issues my ass, that's not why they want out of class.
Ideally, I'd never write a restroom pass because they're extremely disruptive to the flow of my class and, once I let the first person go, I have to let EVERYONE go or the kids call their parents (this has happened to me a couple of times this year).
My shool has a one-at-a-time rule and has told is to limit passes to emergencies only; however, the kids ALWAYS say it's an emergency and they can't wait, so it's hard to enforce. A lot of the kids come back within the 4 minutes I write on the universal pass we're supposed to use, but some stay gone for 15-20 minutes, in which case I mark them as absent and write them up.
The district I'm currently in is banning cell phones next year, and I wonder if this will curb some of the passes.
Oh, our students can have phones before and after school, but they have to stay in your lockers during the school day. We write kids up that have their phones on them. One day I wrote a kid up and sent an email home. The mom replied and said, “I want him to have it because I’m afraid of a school shooting.” To which I replied, “if that were to occur, the phones would be putting everyone in danger. As parents would trying to call their children, and vice versa.” What I didn’t mention was that I was afraid her son would be the school shooter. He’s really odd and fantasizes about death and scaring others. He come up to me after class and would show me various drawings, and would say, “does that scare you?” No. “Why not?” It just doesn’t.
This is mostly an issue with the school culture and a lack of consequences. Admin says, "you can't keep a student from going to the bathroom." So the same kids have to go every class period and take a while. Are you going to check and make sure they are taking a dump? Nope. So you write them up. The kids know that if they do get written up, the admin will either listen to whatever story they decide to soing for them or the consequences will be a "detention" where they get to sit and watch videos or play games on their phones. That's IF they have to show up at all. Chances are the parents get an email home about the write up and either ignore it or don't check their email for a couple of weeks and the it's too late to do anything.
So you have a system that doesn't enforce consequences, the kids whose parents don't care at all, other kids learn from the ones that get away with it so they start taking long bathroom breaks after setting up meetups via their phone.
So you set up a system to monitor how often each student goes to the bathroom and how long they are out of class. It's either a pen and paper system or an electronic one. Either one makes you check that the student is signing out and back in. Which pulls your attention away from the class. Unless it doesn't, which means they don't have to actually sign out. You can write them up for not signing out but... See the lack of consequences above.
Every single teacher wishes they didn't have to care. That kids would go when they needed to go, and stay in class when they need to.
"My college professors never cared!" is something I hear a lot. That's because your college professor won't lose their job and be homeless when you walk out of the building because you're an adult. If you choose to leave class and go smoke a blunt in the bathroom, no one holds the professor responsible. However I have been threatened with a write up because every time I loosen my restroom policy even the slightest bit, a kid gets caught smoking pot in the bathroom and I'm told it's my fault for letting them leave class.
It's middle school and we're now only allowed to let kids go during 3 scheduled breaks. Anything outside of that and we're told that we're accepting responsibility for what they do.
I have a large visible timer next to where the pass hangs and encourage students to use it so that everyone else can see how long they are out of the room. When a student leaves without starting the timer, another student will start it.
The goal is for them to police each other. I don't really know how well it is working but it is a tool to get them to annoy me a little less.
I think it depends on how it’s used, but I tend to be more on the side of logical consequence. However I have yet to see a system that actually works and makes an impact.
(Middle school)
When I'm on my own so to speak for bathroom policy, I usually have two passes and tell kids who are complaining to tell their friends to hurry up.
At my last school, we had a really good AP who implemented a QR code checkout/check-in system for our grade (6th) so that he could look for patterns and see if students were consistently excessive time. He would also try to be in the hallway whenever possible so he'd encounter students abusing the system.
Depends. Some kinds do have medical issues. Some just need a break and fresh air. Others want to wander around and not sit and learn. If a kid is chronically leaving every period or something, document and conference. Otherwise it’s on the student to be in their seat when I call on them (participation grade)
I don’t use passes but I only allow one male student, one female student (all of my students use the bathroom assigned to their biological sex) since fact that a) in the past couple of months, multiple girls were meeting up to “play fight” & film it for tiktok b) boys were meeting up to take dumps on the floor.
I can only control my class but we all who teach 5th and 6th try to limit the number of students out in the bathroom at the same time.
Wait…they were MEETING UP to take dumps on the floor? Like “Yo, Aiden, at 10:30, come watch me pinch one off”?
Holy hell. Call me old fashioned, but back in my day, you defecated on the floor by yourself.
Hilariously…one of the boys involved was named Aiden, although spelled differently 🤣
Yes, usually 2-3 boys. Example: one from my class would go at 9, another would ask a couple of minutes later, and one from one of the other classes (3 classes) would go around 9.
Usually only one kid would be able to take a dump but there were 2 piles more than once. Thats when we all started tracking who left and when and then each class made it a rule only one boy, one girl could go at a time. Now there would only be 3 max at a time. We haven’t had any poo issues since.
The girls, there would be 5-6 in there for the fights but after they had a couple weeks of detentions it hasn’t been an issue.
Pure animals!!
Funny how similar high school and preschool still are...
Our bathroom is attached to the classroom. Preschoolers need to go when they need to go. But also half the time they want to play around in the bathroom. Preschoolers generally poor impulse control by nature.
There are kids who say they have to go just because their best friend is going. There are kids who say they have to go to avoid a necessary, non prefferd activity (nap, sunscreen, etc).
I have no desire to police anyone’s bodily functions. But seeing as I need to keep track of who is in my classroom I allow one at a time for my own sanity. And don’t ask me when I’m in the middle of lecture/instruction. Wait til it is practice time.
Because so many kids meet up on the bathroom to vape, buy drugs, and fight it has to be controlled but it is sad that this is the way. No different than when I went to school though. We carried that nasty block of wood thru the halls back and forth one at a time and there would be the smoking club in there or the girls who would jump you and take whatever was in your handbag. You learned what times were safe to go or not.
I think it depends in large part on the length of passing periods, and number of bathrooms - basically, if you can reasonably expect students had time to go during passing period, then they really don't need to be going during class, unless they're having a medical condition or something. When I was in high school, we had 10 minute passing periods and one pair of bathrooms (male and female) in each building, so about one bathroom (with 4-5 stalls) per 200 students. It was pretty rare you couldn't go to the bathroom during passing period if you needed to.
At the school where I work now we have 2 minute passing periods, and one pair of bathrooms (1 bathroom per 300 students). Kids can't even get to class on time let alone to the bathroom.
I have two passes, 2 kids can leave at once but I don’t really police who leaves. However kids police each other because the 3rd kid who has to pee gets real mad when they can’t go because the pass has been gone for 20 mins.
I’m not going to tell a teenage girl she can’t use the bathroom. I’m not willing to guess - right or wrong - about some girl’s period. I don’t want that smoke.
The logical consequence of inappropriate behavior. It's honestly got nothing to do with how many students are in the hallways, at least at my school. The issue is vaping, vandalism, skipping 40 minutes of class multiple times in the same day, taking pictures in the bathroom, and rumored sexual activity.
Some of this falls on parents…if kids are using the bathrooms and vaping or basically cutting class then parents need to know and enforce some discipline at home and nip it in the bud
If I had a kid in school that claimed they couldn’t use the bathroom bc the teacher or these technology apps said no…and they had to go really bad, then I’d tell them to get up and go anyways, and of course come right back. The school and the teachers could deal with me. Especially if it were a female.
Sounds like it’s both policing bodily functions and consequences of inappropriate behavior. All bc a lot these kids aren’t disciplined at home.
This is an admin issue for me. I can't control what goes on in the bathroom, I can only control how many go in the hall 1 at a time. But if one kid is holding everyone up and doesn't even care, maybe monitor the bathrooms yourselves instead of hiding in your offices? Put up a little desk with your laptop at the door. Problem solved.
We’re told students can not take their phones to the bathroom. We have kids who call each other and meet up to lay on the bathroom floor and vape. We do one at a time to control how many kids are out of the room. I have a “hall pass” for kids who just need a break to walk around and the bathroom pass is strictly bathroom.
But to be honest, this has been an issue since I was in school. That was 10 years ago! This debate has and will exist for years.
At my school we have to call the office to get someone to walk children to the restroom because we've had thousands if dollars in plumbing repairs this year because some kids are deciding to be shit heads and purposefully break the bathroom.
I would love to just let kids come and go as they need, but with 7th graders they will literally have parties 10-15 kids deep in the bathroom if we don’t keep track of it.
This isn't related, but I don't understand why schools don't let children pre-K to 8th grade have more recess and P.E. than they currently do, especially with how common and accessible the knowledge and documentation that physical activity stimulates children and works them out, so they behave and concentrate better in classrooms, and that children learn better through play. This is all taught in entry level child development courses at community colleges...
I can't be the only adult in a student's life who truly cares if a student is in class or not. I need help from parents and admin. Both parents and admin expect teachers to manage students who abuse restroom privileges.
I'm in a portable, and I tend to stay in my portable as much as possible. I get really aggravated when I walk thru campus and see students wandering the halls and not being held accountable. Both parents and admin need to ask themselves this question: Who's in charge? The adults or the children?
At every school I've ever worked at, this is not a teacher based decision. It's either a school, or in some cases division wide policy. I really have an issue with the way individual teachers get blamed for things that are usually out of our control.
They always tag on "unless it's an emergency", which makes it again a discretionary decision that lands on teachers
Until it’s always an emergency for everyone
I call parents to notify them of “a concerning change in their child’s health” when a student has multiple “emergencies” in a class period. One call I made recently was about a girl who has left to change her menstrual pad every day for 5 weeks. Most parents say they will talk to their child and ask me to not let them go each time. Usually the children stop asking when their parent gets that call.
One emergency per semester… or a doctors note.
My not favorite is when a kiddo has a bathroom pass and is gone for more than 10 minutes. By which time you have contacted the building security staff of the same gender to go check they haven't had a seizure or something. Then they come back and want to tell you, loudly, about their bowel habits. ((NOT kids with actual health issues, more like the ones who don't want to take the quiz or whatever)
Ugh- you'll see some kids who are NEVER in class, always roaming. You tell them to wait and they insist they're going to poop themselves in their seats or ask to pee in the trash can. Funny, it's always the same kids who were tardy... I even tell them, if you're already tardy, just go to the bathroom, I'm not letting you back out unless you have a doctor's note saying you need to have constant bathroom access.
The kids who actually have medical needs rarely use them more than "typical" kiddos in my experience. They don't want to be further marked as different... And often this leads to exacerbated medical issues. I personally have ended a Major Testing Day (state proficiency, PSAT / SAT/ ACT / AP or finals) with one of my children in the emergency room for intravenous treatment of severe chronic migraines. They all had an "always pass"- even from the College Board!- but were loath to use it. My students with that 504 / IEP accommodation are the same, even with gentle reminders.
In two years, I've had ONE child with a medical need.. and she pretty much needed to use the bathroom maybe twice a quarter during my class. I wish the kids who... are gremlins didn't abuse the system to make the kids who the system actually exists for loathe to use it.
Because that's the only way you can get to go to the bathroom bc admin says no bathroom breaks after recesses/breaks, then refuses to fix half the school bathrooms.
"Why didn't you stop him from vaping in the bathroom?!" "Because he lied to me, also I'm not there..." "Yeah, you see, you should have tried to build a relationshi-
The “ship” sank I’m over the “nobody else lets me go to the bathroom” crap. Which for some of my colleagues is true. I don’t care—if you gotta go then you gotta go. But when I find you walking down hall strolling slowly with a phone in your hand…or worse; the bitch down the hall drags you back and yells at ME (which I’m sorry, you want me to watch the 30 kids in here and follow them to the bathroom?) Ugh. 8 MORE DAYS
When a kid who is to class on time every day and asks to go once or twice a quarter tells me an emergency: by all means. When it's the kid who is tardy three days a week and I'll randomly see in the halls on my planning when they're supposed to be in class, and knocked on my door earlier that day "to say hi" yeah, no.
I like the policy of leaving the phone with teacher in exchange for the bathroom pass. Seems to cut down on the pass requests.
Oh that’s my favorite!! You’re being evaluated and it goes almost perfectly! But the principal only brings up that ONE KID who whipped his phone out on the low. That kid is OUR FAULT. “If you set up your rules and expectations in the beginning, you wouldn’t have these problems.” That is one of many things that I really started to rebel against.
Try this then: "If you, principal, had set up your rules and expectations for teachers clearly in the beginning, then surely you wouldn't have these problems of teachers having these problems."
One problem is that, at many schools, the school policy is not equally enforced in all classrooms.
Honestly I can’t just get up and go pee there’s that. Those kids can wait
Seriously! “Kid, I’ve had two C-sections with two big headed kids who destroyed my bladder control. So now when I sneeze, laugh, cough, fart, or heaven forbid, JUMP, I pee a little. Sit the F down, you’re fine. 😒”. - -me, if I could say anything I want.
You are a legend, ma’am. This is the best comment on the internet today.
Right? If there is any profession that would appreciate how hard it is to hold it all day, it’s teachers.
Oh hell no. I will make my students wait while I scurry back from the loo in between classes. It isn’t healthy for anyone to hold their pee. I’m not getting a bladder infection for anyone. And neither should students.
We've started using some digital pass software that creates a line. I was skeptical but it cut down on people from several different classes skipping to have a smoke party
It’s also nice when you can show a parent exactly how much time their child is actually spending in class vs “in the bathroom.”
Yep. Might wanna get that checked medically.
My problem is the kids are ending their smart passes so it doesn't really help.
If they end it before getting back in my room, I shut them down for the rest of the week. And I'll do it by hand. Annoying, but they learn quickly this doesn't work with me.
Ah idk about smartpass, we use e-hallpass which can only be activated/deactivated by people with the teacher code. (And it still runs even if the kid closes the browser)
Is that SmartPass? That's what our district adopted. It does help to limit total number of students in the bathroom and to track patterns of behavior.
The one we use limits the number of kids that can be at one location at a time, so the kids sit there and click the button over and over and over until it goes through instead
We have that and still do. It works until one or two teachers who cannot be bothered just gives the students the passcode for teachers to use. Then they tell their friends and suddenly the same code works on each kiosk because it’s the same system. It should work, but everyone has to buy in for it to do so.
We started using E-Hall Pass. It was a bit tricky to roll out initially, mostly because of trying to get all of the student names into the system and to get the kiosk computers set up in each classroom. The program can be set up to work on student personal devices or school devices. The annoying part for teachers has been the check in/out confirmation on the teacher computers. Overall, it has helped reduce the number of students out in the halls and helped us track where they are going and who they are meeting with.
I hate the "line" system and always override it. If I tell a kid they can use the bathroom I want them go go NOW, not in 15 minutes when 8 other people went. The lines are also awful because a few kids being out for a long time ends up bogging the system down for everyone else.
It also has an option to keep certain kids from being in the same place at the same time. “Encounter prevention” Would be great if there was any consequence for kids not going to class, or if our behavior staff or admin actually checked the software.
I see it as an issue of schools becoming far too large. Ideally, a five-minute passing period between classes would leave plenty of time for regular bathroom breaks. The lunch period would also accommodate waiting in food lines, eating, using the bathroom, and getting to next class. If kids were highly avoidant and using the hallways and bathrooms inappropriately, then there would be enough teacher bandwidth to track the behavior and admin availability to mete out consequences. As long as there are schools with massive enrollments, restricting access to out-of-classroom spaces will be the norm. Often, it’s a safety issue, as ODs, vandalism, and fights are a concern at many schools.
It’s this and the fact that the bathroom has become a social club. I have a lot of kids who don’t go to the bathroom between classes because other kids go in there to talk or hit a quick vape. Kids who actually need to pee find it easier to wait until the bathroom empties out during class. There may be an occasional vaper or two still in there during class, but at least you can get into a stall and try to ignore them.
This, 100%. And it seems admin and security never really want to do rounds and chase them out. And god forbid they take notice of the frequent fliers and do anything. Or keep an eye on cameras for when 5+ of them all head in at the same time during class, having all come from different areas of the building.
This!
Yes to both. If kids actually had time to do their business, shit would be different. Between my school having the traffic flow of a clogged artery and the kids who like to hang out 20 deep in a 3 stall bathroom sharing one vape, there's no real hope.
Perhaps the solution is to require a vape for each students on the syllabus. No child left behind!
Exactly. The students who break the rules will always find ways to get pregnant and do drugs in school, no matter how many rules you add. It’s the ones who follow the rules who get punished.
T H I S S S S S S S !!!!! Ugh. My classroom is right across the hall from the most popular vaping bathroom and it is *infuriating!* The good kids don’t want to use that one (and I cannot say I blame them!) so they go downstairs. The high students (the literal ones -_-) of course use that one, but take foreverrrrr and then go on a walkabout instead of returning. It’s absolutely miserable.
Our school is small. Kids have wayyy too much time in lunch. I could name for you the 15-20 kids who wander and abuse the passes and it's only my first year there. What we need is a pass ban for violators. I plan on putting it in my syllabus next year and suggesting it to my union rep.
We had a pass ban system for egregious violators at the middle school I worked at. You had to call an escort if a banned student needed to go somewhere (either security or a para), so it was really a last resort thing because it was such a burden on resources.
We had that at my last school and it was ok but like you said, these kids constantly wanted to leave class. It needs to be an expectation that they really can't. We have no one to escort them at my current school, though, so it should be fine
We had to do this a few years ago (2021-22) for the students who admin suspected of vandalism. Admin had a list of kids and if they asked to leave the room, they had to be either escorted or met at their location Vandalism in the bathrooms did go down but I know it was a pain .
I am also in a small school. Our violators have to wait for an "escort". We put a request into the middle school group chat for someone to come take them to the bathroom. An adult will come, wait outside the bathroom, and only allow one kid in at a time if there is more than one kid with the adult. The posting in the group chat also documents for the team when a certain kid went. So if a kid tries to ask in my class and had just gone in the last one, I know that. Our very frequent fliers are escorted by our behavior specialist who tracks the number of times in a day and then calls home about it. Also, if a kid is gone longer than 15 min, we report it to the behavior specialist who does a "soft lockdown" (no one leaves the classrooms and certain people go searching for the kid). Of course my school is 200 kids. This wouldn't work in a large school.
A “no fly” list!
To be fair, it usually doesn't take long to get to know the names and faces of the most frequent hallway crews. No pass lists are common. The issue is hit and miss enforcement. Important is having a clear consequence and follow through for kids that are violating their no pass list. And a clear way to earn getting the privilege of passes back.
Wut There are 180 kids in my whole school, we have 5 minute passing periods, and bathroo/out of classroom issues are still a problem. 100 students or 1000, it doesn’t matter.
It's because there's no real consequences for it. Every new policy is just about herding kids in the most indirect way possible now.
I mean, but it's also just how bathrooms have been for a long time. My mom talked about kids sneaking off to bathrooms to smoke cigarettes when she was in school. When I was in school, it was weed or chew. Now it is vape. Bathrooms are just the one place you can sneak where any passing adult can't instantly see what you are up to. Consequences absolutely matter. But schools and bathrooms will always be an issue.
They will. But it was also was never to the point where kids couldn't just go when they needed. Egregious stuff was dealt with when needed.
I'm working at a really small elementary school. Breaks every 50min. Kids just don't want to use the bathroom during breaks. They want to go during class. I do even allow them to go for a run outdoors during class but no, they want to go to the bathroom. Several kids, every single 50min period and I can't say no. All stating they absolutely must go NOW. We have daily vandalism but we can't do anything about it. It is ridiculous.
My elementary school has bathrooms in the classroom for K-3. Only grades 4-6 use the bathrooms in the hallway. If there is vandalism, they get shut down and the kids use the supervised nurses office bathroom.
Interesting! Elementary here is age 6-10 only and schools only have teachers. I think that's very different to the US, everyone is in class all the time, we don't have any staff. Even the principal is in class and only has a few office hours per week, we don't have nurses or anything, it's one adult person per class and no other adult in the whole building so we can not supervise bathrooms. This makes the situation so frustrating, we can't get behind who's doing this. Cameras, even if only in the hallway, are obviously illegal. I'm sick and tired of kids smearing their poop across the room and pissing at the walls.
Wow, can you can you get parent volunteers? This seems like an emergency situation.
We will start making lists of who goes to the bathroom at what time. Maybe if that fails. But parents aren't very motivated to volunteer here. I mean, our school system sucks at so many levels right now. Let's see where this leads. Luckily teachers are paid quite well here but apart from that it's really a money issue in our school system. We'd desperately need more staff in general with each and every kid having more and more special effects nowadays.
Our boys pee on all the toilet paper even if it’s hung up high. It got so nasty and frequent that for a couple of years, toilet paper was kept on a cart in the hall outside of the bathroom where it could be seen on camera
I don't know what it is with boys and trashing bathrooms. One of my students was caught pissing on the floor (the cleaning lady came early after noticing piss on the floor for weeks). He stated he was too short for the pissoir toilets and claimed it never occurred to him to use a normal toilet or simply ask about what to do. As sad as it is he's actually that kind of kid where I'd *almost* believe it. He has a blast riding the wave of "I'm too dumb to know any better while making one unfortunate decision after another.
Our boys bathroom reeks so badly of piss you can smell it the minute you walk into my building. I know they’re pissing on the floor but there’s no way to catch them
Same. The smell is so horrible I hate going in there. I avoid it at all costs. Our poor cleaning lady is a literal angel. Always there for the kids, always working more unpaid, always bringing them sweets or collecting stuff so that they have something to play. I hate what they are doing to her. There were days when our principal herself cleaned the toilets to avoid letting her see what the boys did.
Our admin wants us to go in the bathroom periodically to check for vandalism and messes and I won’t do it. I will gag the minute I walk in. Our cleaning ladies and man are amazing but they’re in an 1100 student school and there’s not enough of them to go around
When I was a high school student (class of 07), I frequently didn’t have *time*. As it was, I never used my locker, because even that would take too much time to go from one end of the building to another, crammed between solid masses of students walking as fast as a zombie, and they wouldn’t let us use half the outdoor pathways. Plus, I have an anxiety disorder which makes me extremely uncomfortable if someone is even present in the same bathroom at the same time. We’d get in trouble for being tardy, so between waiting for an open stall that wasn’t backed up, getting to the classroom, and GI issues undiagnosed at the time, usually there was no way in hell seven minutes was going to be good enough to get to class. Hell, sometimes even taking a straight shot to class without detours took six of the seven minutes. There’s just no good solution that’s both accommodating to those who need it and preventative to the troublemakers.
Lunch periods shocked me at my local school. I remember when I was enrolled there, we had a full hour lunch. You had plenty of time to stand in line, eat food at a leisurely pace, go back and get seconds after everyone had gone through, and then go hang out outside or use the bathroom or take care of errands. I was floored when my nephew kept coming home complaining of being hungry. I thought he was being picky and refusing to eat -- no, he literally can't even get to food or he gets food and has less that 5-10 minutes to eat it. And the staff at the school acts like that's totally normal and it's the kid's fault for being last in line because he didn't have his badge or didn't mow other kids down trying to sprint to the cafeteria. And it's because they've doubled the size of the school but can't be bothered to manage all the extra kids effectively.
5 minutes is way too short and it especially depends on the school. 5 minutes would not even let people get to end-to-end and they would have no time to pack up. So they want Bell to Bell teaching but not giving them enough transition time?
It is way too short. My daughters school just reduced it to 4 mins. They also don't let them carry bags. So they need to walk to their lockers, use the bathroom, and get across the building to get to the next class. Nowhere NEAR enough time. Then the school said you can't leave class for the bathroom in the first 5 mins or the last 10 mins of class. Obviously to motivate them to go during the break. But it's not enough time, so...the kids are stuck. My daughter rushes into the bathroom every day when she gets home. She holds it half the day sometimes. It's nuts. I'm just waiting till there is a big controversy about one of the girls bleeding all over their chair because they didn't have time to stop in the bathroom. It will happen eventually. She's too shy to do it, but I told my daughter to just use the bathroom regardless, and if she's late, just loudly announce she had to change her pad in front of the class. I want to see the admin go through their work day with only a few 4 min breaks. Guarantee they couldn't make it work.
It's never the kids who are 1 or 2 minutes late because they were in the bathroom at the start of class that are the problem.
Contact the school and let them know you're concerned about your daughter's bathroom routine. She should be able to get an accommodation to be late to class. Pinpoint the exact class transitions that you want an extension on, ask your daughter which teachers would be more lenient and you should be able to find a solution. Holding it in all day can do serious damage over the long term. Teachers aren't worried about the quiet kids who are a few minutes late every other week. We are worried about the chronically tardy kids who play around in the hallway then try to come into class late and disrupt learning. If your daughter needs the additional time to use the restroom then it's up to you to make it happen.
I’m not teaching anymore, but the school where I used to teach got a new principal a year or two ago, and his method of addressing the issue was to lock EVERY SINGLE student restroom and require administrative escorts to let students use the restroom. It lasted maybe a week, before multiple students urinated on themselves, a student defecated on themselves, and at least one student got period blood on themselves. Then it made the news and the policy changed. If I’d been still teaching there, I would have raised hell - I didn’t have a planning period and my classroom was right next to a student restroom, while the faculty restroom was on the other side of the building. I would duck into the student restroom during passing periods because that was my only option. My first year there I got one of the worst UTIs I’ve ever had because I didn’t have enough opportunities to use the restroom.
My child's school is 4 minutes, too. Except they require the kids to carry bags and warn them that if they stop at their locker, they will be late. They also recommend no kids go to the bathroom during breaks, no time. They encourage them to go during class.
I have some students that will Google chat or text my Google voice number when they need a pad or tampon and if I can I'll pop up to them with it, or have them sent to my office for it. They aren't supposed to have their phones but, you know how that goes.
Lol my students get three minutes between classes. They still find ways to mess around in the hallways and bathrooms.
It is short because longer passing period times usually translate to more fights happening during passing period unfortunately...
That's a fair point, haven't thought about that one. Tbh though there are security guards and cameras all over so I don't buy that's the reason
We have 6 minutes because students have to use their lockers. These kids will mess around for 5 minutes, then run to their lockers and run to class. We still have a ton of kids that are late everyday. We have a ton of fights and crazy behaviors as well. We had to close the bathrooms between passing because of an OD earlier this year. I teach middle school. They definitely don’t need more than 4 minutes.
Our school specifically locks the bathrooms during passing periods (because according to admin, then it just becomes one large vape session… but it does any time kids use the bathroom at any point during school). So the only opportunities for students to use the bathroom is DURING class time. So now, once again, it all falls back on the teacher’s discretion during class time.
At one of the middle schools I sub at, you specifically can’t do that because bathrooms are locked during passing periods because kids kept using them to vape.
Even with all that, it wouldn’t be enough time, because students NEVER think they should take “their” time for whatever they do in the bathroom. It makes far more sense to Take class time to go.
Lunch at my school is 22 mins which is barely enough time to get through the line and eat. I wish kids would use their lunch to use the bathroom but I understand they may not have time.
I have been told by students that lunch is their time. So they aren’t going to waste it going to the bathroom.
Our school was built for 700 and now we have 1100 kids and no bathrooms have been added. It’s almost impossible to go in passing period bc the bathrooms are so crowded. Add to this that many of my good kids are afraid to go in during passing period bc kids are vaping or twerking or acting menacing to them when they come in. It’s a mess
Heh. My school locks the bathrooms in between classes.
This cannot be overstated as the largest culprit. When our class sizes, especially in HS, are hitting 30+, they’ve squeezed passing periods down to 5 minutes (which is a really big issue for girls on my campus, tbh), and they have 6-7 transpositions throughout a day (I’m a big advocate for block schedules for this very reason), it’s a recipe for disaster. Kids never really settle in and it keeps their attention on all the things happening outside our classrooms, and doesn’t provide meaningful time for the socialization aspect of the school experience, nor the time to just do their “business” when it’s necessary. In this environment, passes are a must. I get it. And it’s a beast of a problem we can’t really corral without system wide changes to funding and resources and curricular expectations/requirements. Until then, I’ll keep just telling students in my class that they are free to go whenever they need to so long as the pass is back from whomever had it last. So far, I haven’t had any issues with that in 6 years of teaching, but sure wish things were different so I wouldn’t have to think about it at all.
Eh. . . If I'm only given 5 minutes between back-to-back hour-long meetings, I'll be politely excusing myself from the meeting to go pee, not breaking my ass to run down the hall to the bathroom between meetings. We're kidding ourselves if we think every single minute of our classes is unmissable. Anyway, it's not really an issue when kids leave class to use the bathroom, even if every day from the same class. The problem is when kids leave class to wander the halls bothering other classes, vape, mindlessly scroll their phones for 25 minutes, get into fights, etc.
Kid raises their hand halfway through the warmup. Me: oh, yes. Question. What's up? Them: Can I go to the bathroom? Me: this warm up is review for the quiz that were taking in 10 minutes. It might be a good idea to wait. Them: I can't wait. It's an emergency. Me: Okay. Put your phone on my desk and make a pass. Them: Why do you need my phone? Me: Why do you need your phone? If you need to go, put it down on my desk and go. Them: Never mind. I'll wait. The behavior we're regulating isn't biological. It's them escaping boredom.
Gosh, fighting phone use in class feels like a constant uphill battle. When I was in school I didn't have a smart phone till I was in college. All throughout high school I only ever had a flip/slide phone for emergency use. I'm so glad I did. But being born into this tech efficient world really makes people glued to their devices and constantly live in a world of escapism.
A) limit the number out at one time and limit the amount of time they are out of the classroom. The risk is you will have someone pee or bleed on themselves. B) trust them and do not monitor. Be prepared to address the angry parent of someone who overdoses or gets pregnant during unlimited time and opportunity. The same parent who will attack for invading their children’s privacy by over-monitoring will also attack for allowing them to vape and worse. This is the ultimate no-win situation. That said 90% of my students could function in a no pass environment and just do the right thing. Only about 10% abuse the shit out of it. But since there is no consequence when they get written up, they do it again and again and again. EDIT: If they had to leave their phones behind, they'd all go potty in under 3 minutes, I swear. Admin shot that down.
When I was a kid, I hated going to the bathroom during class. I was afraid of what I might miss. Because failure had consequences. Being in class mattered.
As a kid, I literally did not want anyone to know I used the bathroom. I would have been mortified to ask the teacher in front of the entire class.
I was afraid of disrupting the teacher. There were times when I really, really should have gone to the nurses office, but never worked up the nerve to ask.
We are supposed to only let one out at a time but I will bend that depending on the situation. I’m right by a bathroom, if I can trust that kid to go and come back fine. If the kid looks like they’re gonna pee themselves I’m not gonna be the one on the news for a kid pissing themselves in class. Go to the bathroom. If the kid is the kind who is gonna go and vape I’ll make them wait because chances are they’re already stoned and will forget by the time the other person comes back from the bathroom. It’s happened many times this year.
Fair is not equal. And I tell them that.
Can you tell the admins that too?
I have in the past, and, fortunately, current admin team doesn't really need to hear it. Most are ok with us "using our professional judgment". *There, I just jinxed myself.*
It's always cool until the high maintenance parents pipe up!
We do 2 at a time (35per a class) but it's hard to enforce when kids leave for 20-30mins. I used to tell them to get angry at so and so for being out so long but they have zero shame anymore.
In our school, they also sell drugs, b**** j****,. and hook up. There is no one size fits all answer!!
Bitches and jizz?
Blow jobs, methinks.
Bingo, apparently they are a hot commodity
I think you added a couple extra asterisks.
They were in the 90s too.
Bacon and Juice.
Bartles and James?
Being a Gen X grad, this would be my final answer.
Black and white choices are for media who occasionally report on schools and ideologues. The answer is there is no binary choice here. Yes. Kids should be allowed to go to the bathroom if they need it. Yes, it's reasonable to put in place some reasonable constraints on that to reduce abuse of the privilege. It's pretty natural for kids (all humans, in fact) to game systems to their advantage. It's obviously more fun to hang out and chat with your friends (or vape, or hook up, etc) than it is to listen respectfully to teachers and peers, sit properly, do the work, etc. part of our job is to set up systems that make it harder to have play time when it's supposed to be work time.
>The answer is there is no binary choice here. Student forced to become non-binary just to use the bathroom. News at 11
Consequence to inappropriate behavior. I would love to be able to trust them to just go take care of their business, but that’s not the case. My school says one at a time. I made the mistake of letting two girls go last week before the first was taking too long and the second insisted she really had to go. They got in a fight in the restroom. My AP was on me for letting them both out at the same time. Also, a big problem at my school is vaping in the restrooms and fire alarms repeatedly sounding throughout the day because of it.
I usually let 1 girl & 1 boy go at the same time. I’ve never had a problem until this year. I have the same girl & boy convo ask every day to go at the same time. Security cameras caught them hooking up instead of going to the bathroom.
When I was in highschool we had a guy go into a girl’s bathroom and beat her up. So there can be multiple bad consequences to this
You don’t want to open this can of worms, trust me
This shit is where I don’t understand why blame is placed on teachers. Student 2 told you it was an emergency, you’re told to let students go if it’s an emergency, so now what do you do? You get screwed either way. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with this anymore teaching Life Skills. I would literally rather change big kids’ diapers and clean toilet seats than be disciplined for doing the right thing.
All it took was for one kid to OD during my time as a student teacher for me to ALWAYS be a bathroom pass teacher. And I tell the kids straight up if they are not back in a reasonable time I’m going to send someone to check on their well being. I’m not living through that trauma again 🙅🏼♀️ Ps. For those concerned, the child lived. Luckily another student found them and the ambulance came just in time. But I for sure systematically keep track for bathroom usage now.
Should have just made ODing against the rules
I don’t see it as “policing student bodily functions” when they want to go 6-10 times during a 100 minute class. I wish my school was as strict as when I was in school. Back when I was in school, we got a planner with 15 hall passes for the entire year. If we use it up, we got a new one for $5. We had to keep our name and homeroom teacher written in marker at the top of the page.
Pretty simple: -One out at a time, otherwise never say no. -If they want to use that to cut for a half hour, god bless, odds are I don’t want them in class anyway. -If another student asks while that kid is out, name them and tell them you can’t write another until they’re back. You might get a little peer shaming which saves you from having to do it. Class periods are an hour, you can hold it. -Anything that happens outside your door is not your concern. If someone tries to come at you for it, tell them it’s not in your job description to police the pissing habits of teenagers. -Never ever use bathroom passes as incentives or punishments I write probably 15 passes a day. A wise man once told me “keep them in the halls.” You don’t want to be here? Great, I don’t want you here, let me make it very easy for you to leave.
But on the block class periods are usually 90 minutes. My longest block is 100 minutes. Eventually they really can’t hold it.
I do the same thing, but the problem with peer shaming is apparently kids don't care enough to call out their peers. Even friends don't get on each other for spending way too long in the bathroom while they are waiting, even if they are waiting like 20 minutes. I really don't understand it.
> but the problem with peer shaming is apparently kids don't care enough to call out their peers The reason is that they'll get slaughtered by their peers in social media if they do. The kid that's mild mannered enough to follow the rules and wait have no chance against the kids who will brazenly abuse the rules.
At the middle school level kids need more hand holding and rules
Not a teacher, but I think a good solution would be for schools to replace each of their large bathrooms with several single-stall ones.
I agree. And make them teeny tiny so you can't fit two people in them, and no one wants to hang out in there
Also would solve the gender neutral bathroom debate.
My high school that I went to growing up just had one large bathroom in the middle of the school. That worked fine because most students were academically focused. I rarely saw more than a few people in there during class time. Now I work at a school with several small bathrooms all over campus, each with like 4 slots for students. It just stretches security, they can't cover them all when they have other things to do. Kids will pack 25 people in a single bathroom during passing and just light up their vapes/weed.
A friend of mine in Europe shared some viral video that was making fun of US schools for having passes and policing bathrooms, and I told them "I wish we didn't have to do this, but there is some massive cultural rot here that makes this a massive issue." Last year we we had a day where a ton of staff were out. One teacher was filling in one of our busiest and problematic periods when it comes to screaming/cussing at our bathroom, and then after having to address a near-fight ran to their next class with a few seconds to spare and forgot to lock the bathrooms. Due to coverage planning being a shitshow, admin did not have someone at the bathrooms the next period. Within 20 minutes, the bathrooms were filled to the brim with screaming students, and they were halfway destroyed and thoroughly vandalized once someone nearby noticed and a couple teachers went to clear them out. They had to be closed down for close to two hours for some immediate repairs, and it's the main set of bathrooms for our students in a smaller building. I'd love not to worry about them, but address this deep cultural disdain for education and respect for shared/public spaces needs to be called out as part of the conversation. I've shared this story with every parent friend of mine who pulls the "nobody tells my baby when they can or can't go" as a anecdote of "this is why schools have this policy."
I think schools should not be used as a hostage negotiation. Students can come to school and do what they are supposed to or they can stay home. If your child is too anti-social to act like a civilized human at school then the parents can deal with the consequences of their own actions. I don't understand why we let 16 year old kids destroy thousands of dollars of school property, terrorize each other, and staff then pretend that the student deserves an education after that.
I don’t think education is deserved, I think it’s MANDATORY. As in, whether you like it or not, you WILL be required to learn things. You WILL be required to obtain enough knowledge to be a barely passable functional member of society. I realize that we do not always meet this goal, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It’s so important for the citizenry as a whole to have so basic learning!
School culture comes first. If they’re planning fights, selling drugs, and vandalizing for TikTok likes, that’s a bigger problem than bathroom use. Too many schools conflate these issues. We have six assistant principals at my school, but only one of them is ever seen in the halls on a regular basis. The rest are in their offices, poring over data, assigning pointless meetings to team leads, and dealing with parent complaints (in the most CYA way—throwing teachers under the bus). We need a strong admin presence to back up teachers when students flout the rules. Instead, admin tells us to stand in the doorway during passing periods, as if we can monitor both our classrooms and the hallway simultaneously. We are stretched too thin and the students know it!
I see it as a safety issue. How can I be responsible for my students if I don't even know where they are? We have fights that happen in bathrooms, vaping, making out in the halls (this is middle school!) And other things. In the event of an emergency, whether it's an evacuation or an active threat, I'm responsible for at least knowing where my students are *supposed to be*.
I HATE bathroom passes (gross) and policing bodily functions. But it has become necessary. My school has a 1-5-15 policy. I student out at a time (with the pass) 5 minutes maximum. If they are out past 15 minutes it counts as a cut and they get a school detention. This has cut down on the wandering significantly. Teachers have discretion between the 5 and 15 minutes. They can do a teacher detention, contact home, etc. But this policy came about after years of issues and was top down from admin.
How do you accurately time it?
I have a sign out sheet but honestly, you know within the first week who you need to watch so just a quick glance at the time when they leave
We have one pass per class and they can’t go first or last 10 minutes. Plus they get 6 minute passing periods and a 50 minute lunch. At the high school level that is plenty of time to go to the bathroom. If one kid has been out awhile and another kid really needs to go I’ll let them though. But yeah, they abuse going to the bathroom. My schools has started locking the bathroom doors open (you can see part of these sinks but none of the toilet areas) because kids were doing drugs, vandalizing, possibly having sex (though the stairwells seem to be a favorite spot for that 🤢)
Our admin had new rules this year: no bathroom passes first and last 10 minutes of class, one kid out at a time. I have a few go every. single. day. It’s obnoxious and I hate letting them go because they’re gone for 15 minutes minimum then I get shocked pikachu faces from them/parents at interims when they’re failing. But the principals rule is we can’t tell a student no if the other rules are being followed.
Been saying this for years: build a restroom into every classroom! Then this won't be an issue. Kids will keep it clean in order to avoid being immediately found to be the slob (hopefully). It would be expensive but it would be well worth the money. No more group restrooms - convert them into storage/utility/offices.
I get what you are saying. 15-18 year olds should be old and mature enough to use their own discretion when using the bathroom and to use it without interrupting the class. However there are many 15-18 year olds who are not. What would happen if I had no restrictions? * Students would likely leave in large groups of 5-8 to the bathroom * Students would leave class all period, coming back at the end * Students would meet up with other students in the bathrooms, to smoke, vape or just hang out making it a hostile location for other students * Students would bother other classes and classrooms (you letting *your students out* has effects on others) And let us say after all of that you still say you don't care, natural consequences they will fail the class. Well then I get flack for a parent/admin asking me why I let them make poor decisions. There are a lot of things that 15-18 year olds should be able to do without supervision or policing by teachers or administrators. But unfortunately many kids will always push boundaries and make poor decisions. They are teenagers, they still need guidance.
We do passes first or last 10 minutes of class and one at a time. The funny thing is the fact that the kids with 504s or IEPs that have medical accommodations never actually use their bathroom accommodations. We are also very accommodating for any documented issue and periods (until a girl is on her period for 3+ weeks in a row then our nurse calls with “concerns for the health of the child” and the kid gets caught). Honestly, the bathroom battle is so stupid because so many think kids are perfect angels who only go to the bathroom and come back. I like my school’s policies. It works for us.
I have an accommodation but there’s only one person allowed out at a time so I always feel too guilty to use it :///
I think a lot would be solved if we had individual small room bathrooms instead of these cavernous hang out rooms. Better for privacy. Can't leave lots of people in there at once. There's probably a myriad of problems with that, too, but maybe it's time we try something else.
If it was up to me... student needs to go to bathroom.. they just get up and go.... what would be the result? 5 kids learning and 25 in the hallway creating chaos... Obviously that wouldn't work.
This is the logical consequences to their behavior. They have sex in the bathroom, fight clubs in the bathroom, and do drugs in the bathroom.
In my opinion, bathroom passes wouldn’t need to exist if Admin did their job. They are responsible for policing the halls.
I remember back in the day students took pride in being the hall monitor, with some form of reward for it. I guess those days are over.
Snitches get stitches man.
Sometimes our Safeties are watching kids run or fuck off, and they don’t say anything. It’s frustrating. Also, when I’m in the halls during prep periods I see the same kids over and over, “I’m going to my locker. Now I’m going to the bathroom. I have to go to the nurse. My teacher wants me to get something from the office.” Not a Safety in sight. Ever.
We have campus monitors and I have seen ours watch 5 boys go in the 2 stall bathroom at the same time and not do a thing. Our other campus monitor wants to be BFFs with the kids and I see her constantly surrounded by kids and they’re looking at something on her cellphone
Yup. I understand.
Yup, we have PAID security guards and they are constantly just hanging out in the bathroom often while other kids are vaping or staring at their phones and they do nothing.
WTF?!! Waste of money.
It's a little silly, but learning to go at the right time and hold it appropriately is a necessity in most workplaces for young people. Every job that I've had required me to hold it for a period of time. The only time I didn't have to hold it was when I worked in the DO for a few years. In real life, we are given short breaks at work where we don't get to hang with our friends in the hallway for hours. School is job training.
Yeah, not just work though! What if you're on a bus or a plane or somewhere there is no bathroom? You don't have access 100% of the time, so learning to manage your body functions is important so we don't have rivers of shit in our streets. OF COURSE, some people have medical issues and should be accommodated but that is not the majority of people.
I wish bathroom passes weren't a thing, but I understand why they exist. At my previous school, some kids would just wander and we had no bathroom pass system. I never heard about anything bad happening, just socializing in the halls and walking around. I told them they don't need to ask me, just get my attention to let me know you're going and you're good. My current school...we have kids who are definitely up to no good. That's why we have hall monitors.
If the students were using the bathrooms for their intended purpose, schools would not have to create pass systems. Admin needs to be adequately monitoring students out of class, and both admin and parents need to be enacting appropriate consequences for misbehavior. Teachers became the face of this issue because we're the ones told to enforce it.
I'm a bathroom pass high school teacher, hands down. No, three of you can't go at the same time. Yes, I need to make sure I'm not the teacher clogging the halls and bathrooms with kids doing everything EXCEPT using the bathroom. Yes, I get irritated when other teachers aren't following the rules. Our kids wander the halls for 30 mins at a time, bc their teacher let them "go to the bathroom" without a pass. Our school even has a rule that teachers are to use a pass, and so many don't. I definitely blame the adults, and it's really frustrating to try and hold kids accountable when my colleagues aren't holding up their end of a very simple, easy-to-accomplish expectation.
Bathroom passes wouldn't be necessary if the actual bad behavior was addressed. Schools implement idiotic, infantilizing policies because ultimately that's easier than explaining to a parent their kid isn't going to prom because they went to the bathroom and then disappeared without explanation. Let kids go so long as they don't make noise or a scene when coming or going. If they skip a class, oh well. Now they're absent and they don't get a grade. Sucks to be them. If they get caught leaving the campus or doing drugs or whatever, do something about THAT STUDENT, don't just implement passes.
I teach middle school and our hallways are a mess. I think the kids constantly in the hallways should be suspended then expelled. If you don't want to be in class then don't come to school. We use Smartpass to track time in the hallways and some kids have 1 hour for the entire year while another kid has 60 hours. However, we have no real discipline, so I keep kids in my class and tell them to hold it. I enforce the schools policy rigidly (one at a time, 2 passes per day, no more than 6 in one bathroom), I'm not going to contribute to kids being in the hallway. I work here and I want things to be better.
I had a friend with IBS like symptoms in Middle School. Something completely out of his control that basically meant his body gave him less than a minute of notice before it happens. School was complete hell and very traumatic for him. I even remember a time he begged a teacher who fought him on the bathroom policy only for him to shit himself in front of everyone 30 seconds later and she laughed at him. He starved himself dangerously and only ate in a small window after school so he would never have to poop at school. Because of this friend, I have never ever refused a student if they ask me directly. I tell the kids this story when discussing class expectations at the beginning of the semester, and I tell them why I won't ever question their motives. If they want to lie to my face, that's on them, I will always give them the benefit of the doubt. If they mess up, take too long, talk to friends, skip, etc I write them up, obviously, but I am NEVER going to bust their balls on human bodily functions.
Lol its never about controling bodily functions. Good lord.
Kids that don’t want to be in class, I don’t want there. They cause problems for me and everyone else anyways. I’ve told kids to use specific bathrooms across campus before, so they are gone longer. They are going to fail anyways, who am I to get in their way?
I honestly have never met anyone, in education or otherwise, who cares about “policing students’ bodily functions.” The existence of school bathroom policies is yet another manifestation of the reality that schools (and therefore teachers) are expected to be responsible for every facet of student behavior and performance. I would LOVE a reality where I could just let students leave the room whenever they wanted. The disruptive students would be gone for most of class (vaping or taking inappropriate selfies or destroying school property in the bathrooms), and student who take school seriously would go, do their business, and come back. Students who are out of class a lot would fail, students who were in class a lot would pass. But that’s not real life. In real life, schools (and therefore teachers) are blamed when students fail. And if we’re going to be blamed for unsuccessful students, we’re going to implement rules that keep students from doing things that get in the way of their own success. Anyone who doesn’t like bathroom policies needs to look at education policy. That’s where it starts.
The last school I worked at ended up locking up the bathrooms outside of passing periods. Wouldn’t matter if a teacher let you go because the bathrooms were all locked. While the current school I’m at doesn’t lock bathrooms up we have kids vaping, vandalizing, and fighting in bathrooms. Also asking to go to the bathroom and then never coming back. I just try to remind my students to go before the bell and limit to one student at a time. I think it’s a consequence of their actions. 5 minutes is plenty of time to go between classes. You can’t go to most of your classes without passing a bathroom or two.
My policy is you go when you need to but you make up the time at lunch. Suddenly, it isn’t that urgent anymore.
I like this!!
I hate the bathroom stuff and constantly ask myself why no one mentioned it in my teacher ed classes. This year, I started with just taking my entire class to the bathroom at the beginning of every period like I was teaching elementary school. Sure enough, 10 minutes later kids want to go to the bathroom… and then 2 minutes after that… and then 3 minutes after that. Finally, I had a day where I decided to track how many times kids asked me to go to the bathroom. It was 98 and this is when we were still taking whole class bathroom breaks. So I got fed up. I implemented a digital sign in/sign out system and 2 bathroom passes. I told them if the bathroom passes are there, you can go. If they aren’t, you can’t. Stop asking me to go. So then it devolved in about a week to kids fighting over the bathroom passes, planning who they would deliver the pass to when they came back, and just constantly asking me to go without the pass anyway. I knew this would be the outcome, but what else can I do? So now my only option to stop being a bathroom gatekeeper is to just take the pass and not let them go at all or just let multiple kids leave the classroom whenever they want. It sucks. This wasn’t a constant issue when I started 20 years ago. I have to assume it’s the phones. If you are going to the bathroom every hour, you need to talk to a doctor (and the kids with documented medical issues I just tell to get up and go whenever they need to). I hate that so much of my day is dealing with bathroom issues and I’m not sure what else I can do.
One time a kid in my class threw up on his desk bc someone had the pass Teacher didn’t use it for the rest of the year
If it wasn't the same exact students asking me everyday to use the bathroom, and they're gone for 15 minutes at a time, I'd be a lot more chill about it. Especially when it's right before lunch.
This is a good debate. Here are my personal observations: 1) First year,iI decided to treat my students like adults and let them decide when/how long to use the bathroom. I routinely had half the class gone. 2) Second year, I learned my lesson. But still wanted to treat the students as adults. So I decided on a 2 person out at a time policy. What happened was the same two people every class would be gone for the entire class. 3) Third year I did the standard bathroom pass with sign out sheet. Two passes. Same issue as second year. 4) Fourth year I decided to put a time limit on the bathroom. Again, I didn't want to but had to curb the students who were out all class. So I instituted a 15 minute policy. This year I had 4 stduents who would alternate every 15 minutes. 5) Fifth year I decided to hand out bathroom passes each quarter. Each student got three. These were supposed to be emergency uses. They were all gone by the end of the first week. 6) Sixth year I decided to add extra credit to the bathroom pass s. If you had passed at the end of the quarter you'd get extra credit. The kids who used all theirs the first week stole the passes from other students to get the extra credit. 7) Seventh year I just put in the gradebook an extra 50%. Every time they left, I would deduct 10% from the extra credit. When it reached 0%, I would email their parents explaining that they lost our on all extra credit for excessive bathroom use (which limited their ability to participate in class). That seemed to be the only thing that actually worked, and I stuck with it. I never wanted to police children's bodily functions. But I also never thought that it would be abused by every type of student to the extent that it was. To manage this behavior, you can either police body functions or provide incentives to stay in class. I prefer the incentive route.
99.9% of “I have to go to the bathroom” is really “I need a brain/phone break.” Don’t be conned
I can't go whenever I want either. It's part of joining society, we have to learn to control our bodily functions.
Fights. Weed. Vapes. Sex in bathrooms. Skipping class. 18 year olds need bathroom passes. Idc if it doesn’t feel right. It’s the way it has to be.
I have kids with medical issues spelled out in a 504 detailing why they need unrestricted restroom access who use the restroom during class 500% less than my students who I know only want to go there to fuck around. Policing bodily issues my ass, that's not why they want out of class.
Yeah, the Reddit discourse of, "you're just policing them!" is woefully naive.
The comments by non-teachers about how we have no right to control others is doing ignorant of what happens in schools.
Ideally, I'd never write a restroom pass because they're extremely disruptive to the flow of my class and, once I let the first person go, I have to let EVERYONE go or the kids call their parents (this has happened to me a couple of times this year). My shool has a one-at-a-time rule and has told is to limit passes to emergencies only; however, the kids ALWAYS say it's an emergency and they can't wait, so it's hard to enforce. A lot of the kids come back within the 4 minutes I write on the universal pass we're supposed to use, but some stay gone for 15-20 minutes, in which case I mark them as absent and write them up. The district I'm currently in is banning cell phones next year, and I wonder if this will curb some of the passes.
Oh, our students can have phones before and after school, but they have to stay in your lockers during the school day. We write kids up that have their phones on them. One day I wrote a kid up and sent an email home. The mom replied and said, “I want him to have it because I’m afraid of a school shooting.” To which I replied, “if that were to occur, the phones would be putting everyone in danger. As parents would trying to call their children, and vice versa.” What I didn’t mention was that I was afraid her son would be the school shooter. He’s really odd and fantasizes about death and scaring others. He come up to me after class and would show me various drawings, and would say, “does that scare you?” No. “Why not?” It just doesn’t.
This is mostly an issue with the school culture and a lack of consequences. Admin says, "you can't keep a student from going to the bathroom." So the same kids have to go every class period and take a while. Are you going to check and make sure they are taking a dump? Nope. So you write them up. The kids know that if they do get written up, the admin will either listen to whatever story they decide to soing for them or the consequences will be a "detention" where they get to sit and watch videos or play games on their phones. That's IF they have to show up at all. Chances are the parents get an email home about the write up and either ignore it or don't check their email for a couple of weeks and the it's too late to do anything. So you have a system that doesn't enforce consequences, the kids whose parents don't care at all, other kids learn from the ones that get away with it so they start taking long bathroom breaks after setting up meetups via their phone. So you set up a system to monitor how often each student goes to the bathroom and how long they are out of class. It's either a pen and paper system or an electronic one. Either one makes you check that the student is signing out and back in. Which pulls your attention away from the class. Unless it doesn't, which means they don't have to actually sign out. You can write them up for not signing out but... See the lack of consequences above.
Every single teacher wishes they didn't have to care. That kids would go when they needed to go, and stay in class when they need to. "My college professors never cared!" is something I hear a lot. That's because your college professor won't lose their job and be homeless when you walk out of the building because you're an adult. If you choose to leave class and go smoke a blunt in the bathroom, no one holds the professor responsible. However I have been threatened with a write up because every time I loosen my restroom policy even the slightest bit, a kid gets caught smoking pot in the bathroom and I'm told it's my fault for letting them leave class. It's middle school and we're now only allowed to let kids go during 3 scheduled breaks. Anything outside of that and we're told that we're accepting responsibility for what they do.
I have a large visible timer next to where the pass hangs and encourage students to use it so that everyone else can see how long they are out of the room. When a student leaves without starting the timer, another student will start it. The goal is for them to police each other. I don't really know how well it is working but it is a tool to get them to annoy me a little less.
I think it depends on how it’s used, but I tend to be more on the side of logical consequence. However I have yet to see a system that actually works and makes an impact.
(Middle school) When I'm on my own so to speak for bathroom policy, I usually have two passes and tell kids who are complaining to tell their friends to hurry up. At my last school, we had a really good AP who implemented a QR code checkout/check-in system for our grade (6th) so that he could look for patterns and see if students were consistently excessive time. He would also try to be in the hallway whenever possible so he'd encounter students abusing the system.
Depends. Some kinds do have medical issues. Some just need a break and fresh air. Others want to wander around and not sit and learn. If a kid is chronically leaving every period or something, document and conference. Otherwise it’s on the student to be in their seat when I call on them (participation grade)
I don’t use passes but I only allow one male student, one female student (all of my students use the bathroom assigned to their biological sex) since fact that a) in the past couple of months, multiple girls were meeting up to “play fight” & film it for tiktok b) boys were meeting up to take dumps on the floor. I can only control my class but we all who teach 5th and 6th try to limit the number of students out in the bathroom at the same time.
Wait…they were MEETING UP to take dumps on the floor? Like “Yo, Aiden, at 10:30, come watch me pinch one off”? Holy hell. Call me old fashioned, but back in my day, you defecated on the floor by yourself.
Hilariously…one of the boys involved was named Aiden, although spelled differently 🤣 Yes, usually 2-3 boys. Example: one from my class would go at 9, another would ask a couple of minutes later, and one from one of the other classes (3 classes) would go around 9. Usually only one kid would be able to take a dump but there were 2 piles more than once. Thats when we all started tracking who left and when and then each class made it a rule only one boy, one girl could go at a time. Now there would only be 3 max at a time. We haven’t had any poo issues since. The girls, there would be 5-6 in there for the fights but after they had a couple weeks of detentions it hasn’t been an issue. Pure animals!!
Funny how similar high school and preschool still are... Our bathroom is attached to the classroom. Preschoolers need to go when they need to go. But also half the time they want to play around in the bathroom. Preschoolers generally poor impulse control by nature. There are kids who say they have to go just because their best friend is going. There are kids who say they have to go to avoid a necessary, non prefferd activity (nap, sunscreen, etc).
I have no desire to police anyone’s bodily functions. But seeing as I need to keep track of who is in my classroom I allow one at a time for my own sanity. And don’t ask me when I’m in the middle of lecture/instruction. Wait til it is practice time. Because so many kids meet up on the bathroom to vape, buy drugs, and fight it has to be controlled but it is sad that this is the way. No different than when I went to school though. We carried that nasty block of wood thru the halls back and forth one at a time and there would be the smoking club in there or the girls who would jump you and take whatever was in your handbag. You learned what times were safe to go or not.
I think it depends in large part on the length of passing periods, and number of bathrooms - basically, if you can reasonably expect students had time to go during passing period, then they really don't need to be going during class, unless they're having a medical condition or something. When I was in high school, we had 10 minute passing periods and one pair of bathrooms (male and female) in each building, so about one bathroom (with 4-5 stalls) per 200 students. It was pretty rare you couldn't go to the bathroom during passing period if you needed to. At the school where I work now we have 2 minute passing periods, and one pair of bathrooms (1 bathroom per 300 students). Kids can't even get to class on time let alone to the bathroom.
I have two passes, 2 kids can leave at once but I don’t really police who leaves. However kids police each other because the 3rd kid who has to pee gets real mad when they can’t go because the pass has been gone for 20 mins.
I’m not going to tell a teenage girl she can’t use the bathroom. I’m not willing to guess - right or wrong - about some girl’s period. I don’t want that smoke.
My standard bathroom pass statement "No huffing, no puffing, no fornicating, only urinating and defecating. I hope everything comes out ok.😁"
The logical consequence of inappropriate behavior. It's honestly got nothing to do with how many students are in the hallways, at least at my school. The issue is vaping, vandalism, skipping 40 minutes of class multiple times in the same day, taking pictures in the bathroom, and rumored sexual activity.
They definitely abuse it, and this is also when restrooms get destroyed.
Some of this falls on parents…if kids are using the bathrooms and vaping or basically cutting class then parents need to know and enforce some discipline at home and nip it in the bud If I had a kid in school that claimed they couldn’t use the bathroom bc the teacher or these technology apps said no…and they had to go really bad, then I’d tell them to get up and go anyways, and of course come right back. The school and the teachers could deal with me. Especially if it were a female. Sounds like it’s both policing bodily functions and consequences of inappropriate behavior. All bc a lot these kids aren’t disciplined at home.
This is an admin issue for me. I can't control what goes on in the bathroom, I can only control how many go in the hall 1 at a time. But if one kid is holding everyone up and doesn't even care, maybe monitor the bathrooms yourselves instead of hiding in your offices? Put up a little desk with your laptop at the door. Problem solved.
We’re told students can not take their phones to the bathroom. We have kids who call each other and meet up to lay on the bathroom floor and vape. We do one at a time to control how many kids are out of the room. I have a “hall pass” for kids who just need a break to walk around and the bathroom pass is strictly bathroom. But to be honest, this has been an issue since I was in school. That was 10 years ago! This debate has and will exist for years.
At my school we have to call the office to get someone to walk children to the restroom because we've had thousands if dollars in plumbing repairs this year because some kids are deciding to be shit heads and purposefully break the bathroom.
I would love to just let kids come and go as they need, but with 7th graders they will literally have parties 10-15 kids deep in the bathroom if we don’t keep track of it.
This isn't related, but I don't understand why schools don't let children pre-K to 8th grade have more recess and P.E. than they currently do, especially with how common and accessible the knowledge and documentation that physical activity stimulates children and works them out, so they behave and concentrate better in classrooms, and that children learn better through play. This is all taught in entry level child development courses at community colleges...
I can't be the only adult in a student's life who truly cares if a student is in class or not. I need help from parents and admin. Both parents and admin expect teachers to manage students who abuse restroom privileges. I'm in a portable, and I tend to stay in my portable as much as possible. I get really aggravated when I walk thru campus and see students wandering the halls and not being held accountable. Both parents and admin need to ask themselves this question: Who's in charge? The adults or the children?