Pedagogy Year Zero

[substitute]

If I were the parent of a child in this teacher's class, I would have to be restrained from physically assaulting her.

In case she deletes this after being LJDrama'd to Yuggoth, her post is pasted with post-paste technology below.

I know I am Ms. Posts-A-Ton lately but I am trying to give out info that will be useful for people as we all head back to school.

Today I am showing my restroom procedures for (9-12) kids. This came out of a problem that I had last year. (Too many kids needed to use the bathroom every day and they miss too much work. They are also gone for prolonged periods and would ask for passes at the most innapropriate times.)

This procedure allows for each student to be responsible.
It gives me a code so I know WHY someone has his or her hand raised.
I can take care of the situation quickly without disrupting the flow of the class.

As for the grand prize...(I found some cheap electronic organizers( 12-20 bucks at drugstores/grocery stores/office stores.) I am only buying one every nine weeks so 48-80 dollars for peace and quiet around bathroom procedures (for 200 teenagers)is worth it.

You will find a copy of my procedure list/signed form below as well as my clip art bathroom passes underneath that.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/whyintellectual/restroomprocedurescan.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/whyintellectual/restroompassesscan.jpg

EDIT

Many people that have commented, failed to take into account that my school (and others) MAY have a hallway pass policy. Students are NOT allowed out of class AT ALL without a correctly colored hall pass signed by a teacher with: STUDENT'S NAME, TIME, DATE, CLASS AND THE DESTINATION.
This system allows for my students to tell me they need to use the restroom without calling out and yelling. I can easily write out the pass for the student and then hand it to them while everyone else is working. I have no need to stop class to allow Susan to tell me she has to pee.
My school is not overly large. I myself can walk from the farthest end and stop at a restoom and be at my door before the tardy bell rings. My own high school that I attended was twice as large and I could do it there as well.
I am NOT ALLOWED to have student walk out my class. I don't work in a safe school. We have trained adult hall monitors that are prepared to take a student to the ground in case of violence. (This pass system works for me and many other schools that are required to use a hall pass system.)

As for the rule about when the student can ask (10 minutes after or before a bell) that is a school rule and it is not something I can change. I certainly wish that I had a restroom located in my classroom so I could avoid these problems but I don't.

Comments

I see nothing wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

What is she doing that is so harmful to these kids that you would want to harm her?

Re: I see nothing wrong.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Peeing 3 times in 9 weeks?

Re: I see nothing wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

During her class is the only opportunity they have in their day to pee?

Re: I see nothing wrong.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

1. Not letting people pee when they have to is dangerous and humiliating. This is a tactic used in abusive prisons, not schools. It can result in serious illness.

2. If you're going to keep this up you'll have to drop the anonymous. I'm assuming you're her at this point and screening everything otherwise.

[so-gracefully.livejournal.com]

way to promote renal failure!

[bruisedhips.livejournal.com]

first grade????????\\.

[cordiloquy.livejournal.com]

It's hard to tell, but I think she's talking about the first year of high school -- she mentions something about "200 teenagers" and I think she means *grades* 9-12. Which almost makes it worse...well, not worse, but a different brand of authoritarian assholery. Eek.

Professional Track

[mr-flippant.livejournal.com]

They are obviously being prepared for prosperous careers at Wal-Mart.

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

She seems to have edited it again:

EDIT
(STUDENTS HAVE 11 CHANCES TO USE THE RESTROOM DURING AN 8 HOUR DAY. STUDENTS DO NOT ALWAYS NEED TO USE THE RESTROOM DURING ART CLASS.)

-It seems that many people commenting have not taken into account that many schools REQUIRE hall passes. My school does. The hall pass must be the appropriate color (which changes without warning) it must have: THE SUDENT'S NAME, TIME, DATE, TEACHERS SIG, CLASS LEFT AND DESTINATION.
-I do not have a restroom available in my classroom. I wish I did. I also wish I worked in a school where kids were able to go where they wanted and that they would be eaisly trusted by the school faculty.
-But I face reality and deal with the fact that sex in the bathrooms is a big issue. Sexual assault in the bathroom is a big issue. Drug deals, drug use and drug violence in the hallways and bathroom is also a problem.
-My school has adult hall monitors trained to take students down to the ground if need be. Does this sound like the kind of school that would allow me to just let my kids walk in and out of class?
-I have rules I must follow and hall passes are required. My admin says restroom passes are at the discretion of the teacher. Many of my coworkers NEVER give passes. I have chosen this method because it gives the students freedom to choose when they leave. If they are given a limit they know they will only be leaving for emergencies.
-If a student has a medical condition than the conditon is noted in his or her file. If it is a new problem than a doctors note is required, I don't need to know why but I do need to know there is a problem. (This was the standard at the high school I attended as well.)
-Yes, I am a female and no, I don't need to change feminine products every fifty minutes. If a girl does need to change products that frequently it is a medical issue and you can refer to the above information.
-I am not allowed to leave my room to use the restroom when I want. I cannot leave my students unattended and I find it unprofessional. During a serious illness I did need to vomit and I called the office and waited for an admin to come and watch my class while I puked and took tylenol for my fever that had come up. That is the ethics of a job.
-I respect my students enough not to let them make excuses. They know darn well what is expected and I have high standards. The students don't mind the system and it works well.
-For the people that dont use hall passes I say, congratulations. I would love to get rid of them. They are required and so I use this system.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Right, they're not in her class all day.

I still think it's insane. If students are asking to go to the bathroom every 10 seconds for fellatio and angel dust, you don't stop it by giving everyone kidney disease with Turkish prison discipline.

[hersheyjumper.livejournal.com]

Damn straight.

[cordiloquy.livejournal.com]

[gratuituous use of hastily made icon of mockery]

yes, yes.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of friends with jobs where they had to account for their bathroom time in seconds and were asked why they took 8 minutes and 38 seconds instead of 8 minutes, etc.

Re: yes, yes.

[bruisedhips.livejournal.com]

I have an old "study hall" ticket from my sophmore year science teacher that states that I has asked to go to the bathroom and was gone "for 11 minutes and 42 seconds".
He just didn't like me, we had no policy on how long we could take to use the bathroom.
This is also the teacher that gave me the grade of D- and when we were called up to recieve our grades, continued to say aloud "minus, minus, minus..." all the way till I was back in my seat.

Bastard died in the gym the next year performing an explosive experiment. jackass.

Re: yes, yes.

[satoribee.livejournal.com]

The universe has ways of working these kind of things out. I had a really asshole boss that ended up firing a bunch of people at a place I worked at for over a decade. After a year or so, he died. The karma wasn't instant, but it did come around.

Re: yes, yes.

[namja.livejournal.com]

We had that on an itemized timecard once. Once we got a little too descriptive we went back to a regular timesheet. (terms like "corn" were used on a coworkers timesheet when explaining bathroom time)

Spleenland

[torgo-x.livejournal.com]

MISS KIBO? CAN I GO NUMBER THREE?

Pedagogy Year Zero

[torgo-x.livejournal.com]

I posted saying in that thread saying that I hoped that the poster would get food poisoning, to learn a bit of empathy. So the totally rockin' forum-mod banned me and deleted my comments! Yay! And that has nothing at all to do with the fact that she's delerious from her brother's sudden death two weeks ago. Everything is fine.

I have often been told I am an angel with horns!
It's not my fault my halo is crooked!

[flipzagging.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that in Torgo's blog too. The whole 1st_yr_teachers community is quite fascinating. My favorite post:

Any ideas on how to integrate technology into fractions? (http://www.livejournal.com/community/1st_yr_teachers/410291.html)

Yes, how indeed?

[jonpants.livejournal.com]

When I was in forth grade my gym teacher didn't let me go to the bathroom and I pee'd in my pants in front of about 50 other fourth graders. Of course seeing how kids that age are so well behaved nobody made fun of me or even punched me.

Rewarding people for not going to the bathroom reminds me of how I trained my dog. She should also be spraying these kids in the face with water.

[fairietard.livejournal.com]

I remember when I had to "wait" and pissed my pants in the second grade, and so the teacher sent to the office. The nurse called my mom and asked her to come and drop off a change of clothes. Instead she got in my teacher's face and then took me home.

I remember the whole thing pretty clearly. It is an awful memory.

[sixteen-shells.livejournal.com]

Hey, the same thing happened to me in kindergarten. Instead of calling a parent, they just took me to their office and gave me a pair of their spare pants. That's right, my school had SPARE PANTS. They gave me my pants back in a plastic bag at the end of the day, and I had to bring their pants back the next day.

In high school, I had a couple of teachers who actually had a policy quite similar to this one. Of course, there wasn't a raffle at the end of the month to reward our continence. A couple other teachers allowed you to go use the bathroom if you needed to, but you also had to carry a giant toilet seat around with you. I figured that was a pretty good way to let people know where you were supposed to be.

Speaking of asinine high school policies, my high school had the policy of locking students out of class if they weren't inside when the bell rang. This was to cut down on the tardy menace, constantly strolling in while the teacher was giving an important lecture on....wait, high school. Assigning busy work and sitting at their desk drinking diet coke. If you didn't make it into class before the bell rang, you were to report to the "study hall/in-school suspension" room. There, you placed your belongings against the wall, sat at a desk, and stared at the wall for an hour. I'm serious. They essentially made you sit in the corner for an hour if you didn't make it to class on time. Very productive!

[trinnit.livejournal.com]

Reward being late for class by attending a No-class class

[jonpants.livejournal.com]

I remember teachers that gave out toilet seats as bathroom passes. The funniest thing in the world was when someone would "lose" the pass. How the fuck do you lose a toilet seat in a span of five minutes and where do the lost toilet seats end up?

[loose-joints.livejournal.com]

Considering the edits she posted, her school does sound more like a prison. Because it has to be one. If sexual assault, drug transactions and violence are problems for ninth graders at school, I really don't think that her bathroom policies are a part of the problem.

I mean I think it's weird, but I went to a high school where we didn't have hall monitors trained to throw you to the ground, for their safety. If your place of work is dominated by the budding street criminals of tomorrow, then I don't think bathroom passes are really a huge violation of anyone's anything.

[zarriq.livejournal.com]

How much of it really is a problem with the students and how much of it is in the adults' heads? We only know what she says about the school and how she thinks about it. The older generation loves to freak out about how screwed-up the youth is. Geezers have been complaining about how the younger generation is going to hell since ancient Sumer.

Sex and drugs in the bathroom? That happened at my school. That has happened and continues to happen at every high school, even expensive private schools in nice neighborhoods.

[loose-joints.livejournal.com]

You are right that some of it may be in the adults heads. However, I'm not talking about consensual sex or buying a joint or a hit of acid. If her school has guards that are trained to take someone down, I'm going to make a leap and say the problems may tend toward assault and larger drug transactions.

I really I am not trying to start a flame war or anything else here. I realize my view is in the minority. I'm also not talking about teachers freaking out about how the next generation is going to hell in a handcart. Because the original poster is posting in the first year teachers group, I doubt she's a geezer, unless you consider everyone over 25 to be worthy of geezerhood.

Finally, I suggest that you try working in an environment where you interact regularly with people who commit crimes on a regular basis before you decide it's all in that person's head.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

The tough school part is true, and obviously you have to do *something* about kids marching off to the loo to shoot heroin or hump each other.

I still think that restricting people to a fixed number of times they can urinate is inhumane enough to make me reconsider the whole situation, and they should too. If you look at some of the other stories people have posted you can see the scars this kind of thing leaves.

If you focus entirely on the problems of the school and forget that you have charge of minors and the primary job is education, then game over; you really do have a prison and making it compulsory is a violation of human rights.

[loose-joints.livejournal.com]

I like you, so I think we should probably just agree to disagree about this one. I'm in the obvious minority and dont't want to start a flame anything or similar in your journal. I think it's silly for the two of us to go back and forth about a situation neither of us knows that much about.

[zarriq.livejournal.com]

Don't we all remember those high-school teachers who treated us like criminals? Didn't we gradually grow to respect them, and learn a lot from them?

Oh, wait. No. Instead of learning, we spent the entire period going "oh god oh god oh god I'm gonna explode".