February 21, 2004

• Unimaginably stupid. I know precisely how I would protest, as well. I don't mind being the social pariah.
• It's no wonder our kids are so fucked up. I've got a wee bladder. It seems that all my life I've had to pee a lot. Probably more than 15 times a month. 17 or 18 I'd imagine. Damn.
• I love how kids are automatically guilty these days. I would be shocked if this policy didn't get shot down. I'll bet $10 it's illegal. Grrr.
• I'm with you, forky. This is wholly unjustifiable tyranny and perhaps the best way to counter such a sad situation would be for every student in the school to drink fluid copiously before attending lessons. To me, this is child abuse, pure and simple.
• Good thing that I'm not in school as the person that I am now (14 year-old with the mind of a 29 year-old). I'd whip out tha' wang and whiz in the middle of class, yo!
• I am so proud. *cough*
• There's something about public school administration that I noticed in my 12-year exposure to it. Shit rises to the top, idiocy flourishes, and the most ridiculous policies are enacted by people without the brains to think a day into the future. They feel as if the children get in the way of the process of running a school. Few people are less dedicated to what should be the goal of their job. What we need are highly-paid teachers with the autonomy to decide if a student is just going pee or is abusing a restroom pass by wandering the halls. Now is that so hard? You could start by cutting the salaries of the administrators. Or firing them. [That said, I wouldn't have gone to school anywhere else for the world.]
• (It does warm my heart that sometimes these policies get national exposure, if only on the internet. That was my dream, when I was on the front lines of this sort of thing.)
• I think the policy's stupid, but you gotta love the verb "to void". Aaaaah-yup.
• While this is a pretty foolish way to address the problem, I do have a little sympathy for the administration involved. Many school districts across the US have a hostile, twisted, litigious parental culture that leads to the development of policies that minimize liability first, shut up parents second, appease teacher unions third, and maybe get to student needs somewhere down the line. That culture may also be the reason the shit rises to the top and you don't often see really smart people administering school districts... they're too smart to take the job.
• See, now I used to avoid going to the girls room in high school so I wouldn't smell like stale cigarettes all day. I forget where I used to work that they tried to do something ridiculous like this. I'm sure it was a call center. You know, not like call center monkeys would need to drink tons of water or anything.
• I teach. I am now in an excellent Magnet Arts High School, but I have also taught in the roughest urban middle schools. When I taught 9th grade at one of them I had this kid that would beg to go to the restroom everyday and end up wandering the halls. So I instituted a NO RESTROOM policy for my classroom and did a good job keeping it. Everyday this moron would keep pestering to leave for the restroom and get told no. One day about halfway through the class, a girl (13 or so) comes up to me and begs to go to the restroom. She gets the stock answer to take care of it between classes. I can tell from the urgency on her face that this is important and she keeps muttering "Mr. Roosevelt, I got problems!! Girl things!!" I am not going to be the one to turn this girl's day into a most embrassing moments letter to a teen magazine, so off she goes. The girl never asked to go anywhere and in my judgement she needed to go. The guy who asked to go everyday pitched a fit, but he still wasn't allowed to go. Meetings with parents and administrators came out of that incident. I had to defend not letting the moron wander the halls with a restroom pass. Teacher's have been litigated into a position where they have to follow highly opjective and auditable rules, so no one can claim you are mistreating their little angel, so insane rules like this come about. I sympathize with their attempts to make it easier to tell the slackers "No" and still allow people to take care of what needs to be taken care of.
• spartacusroosevelt - It's more collective punishment - one person takes advantage of the rules and you punish everyone for it. What's even worse is that instead of trying to figure out why the one person who wanders is doing this, you simply write him off as "a moron". That's really going to solve the problem, isn't it? He's going to graduate (or not) without the skills he needs because no one actually cared enough about him to figure out his lack of affect. Meanwhile, you reinforce in the other kids disrespect and disdain for authority. No wonder people grow up so cynical. No wonder they think school's such a piece of crap. It's easy to get involved with the "good kids". The mark of a good educator is how well they get involved with the "bad kids".
• instead of trying to figure out why the one person who wanders is doing this, you simply write him off as "a moron".
  
  I do not simply write a child off as a moron. I actually more attune to "alternative scholarship" than most of my educator peers and have found some very profound people inside some very poor students. This guy was wandering the halls because he was meeting with his friends and having a good old time in the blind cul-de-sac at the end of the hall. The next year he was busted selling weed in this same hallway. The officer involved said he had been selling there for some time. Maybe the term "moron" denoting subpar intelligence is wrong. This poor misunderstood child had merely figured out a route to an undersupplied market for the chronic, by exploiting people's natural biological need to urinate. Snarkiness aside, I label this child "moron" in retrospect and with all weight of evidence (including the causes of his "lack of affect") that need not be dragged in here, I believe it is a correct observation. You are right though, it is not a moronic attitude that is relevant to my post. It was the difficulty in a school situation to make rules that allow for nuance and subtlety. Zero Tolerance means a nail file is a weapon and it also means in this district everyone gets 15 bathroom trips a month. I don't think it is punishment to tell 13 year olds to use the bathroom before or after a 50 minute class. It can be a necessity to keep on task. Ideally, I would like students to handle these issues between classes and if matters are pressing, urgent or unexpected on occasion we let them take care of it. What I don't need are the same group of students announcing to the class they need to go, then being brought back to class by an administrator because they had been gone a half of an hour and found playing ball in the gym or trying to get students out of other classrooms. The problem is limiting the disruption without being a draconian terror. Because neither the administration nor the parent want the teacher enabled to make a judgment call on it and try to make a hard and fast rule for everyone to follow we end up with rules and regulations that make no sense when viewed at a minimum of distance
  
  It's easy to get involved with the "good kids". The mark of a good educator is how well they get involved with the "bad kids".
  
  I don't have "bad kids" anymore. Some slackers maybe, but I don't have "bad kids." But I did not get into education to rescue anyone. I am in education to ENABLE students to reach their goals. If your student needs salvation or rescueing, see a saint or a messiah. If your student needs motivation and instruction from a knowledgable teacher, I'll be glad to take them.
  
  Where is my spellcheck button?
• Actually, in the case of this school, the students are not allowed to use the bathrooms between classes either, only at lunch. I'm all for the argument that, in general, kids that age can go between classes, unless they have a bladder issue or are menstruating. But in this school, they only have their lunch hour (which may be quite short, and the bathroom lines long?) or their 15 passes a month. Frankly, why doesn't the school issue one a day? That would be reasonable. As a formatting note, I just wanted to suggest that people might break up their comments into smaller paragraphs, as it is easier to read quickly.
• I think the administrators should try applying the rule to themselves. Spartacusroosevelt, your point is well taken, which is why my son's high school has to have hall monitors. 'Scuse me, gotta take a quick break.
• theora I would also like to see administrators keep the rule. Teachers, however, pee amazingly little for the sheer volume of coffee and diet coke (the teacher drugs of choice) they drink.
• The school's policy is shaming and humiliating for the kids. Plus, from a medical standpoint, dangerous and damaging to their health. It's indefensible = abusive, authoritarian, and asinine. I have no sympathy whatsoever for such inhumane treatment of people, whether children or adults.