Lines for the Bathroom

A student’s arm goes up in the air. I am excited! We are in the middle of a discussion and I am thrilled that this student is about to contribute. The class is engaged and listening to each other. Learning is happening!

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

The entire momentum of the conversation is destroyed. The direction of the discussion is changed. There are giggles. Any discussion of potty brings some level of laughter. One of my regular lines is that all humor comes from body fluids and especially with younger students this is very true.

Although some teachers may leave the classroom to go to the bathroom, I cannot justify this. Aside from the liability issue, what if something should happen while I was gone, our time together is simply too precious to waste (on waste  - another line).

There is no doubt that there are times when a student (or an adult) has to leave the room to go to the bathroom. I tell students not to ask permission to leave if they have an emergency. If they are about to throw up, get to the bathroom quickly!

Which raises the question of why should they ask permission to leave at all? The last few years students may simply leave when they want without any announcements. I lay some simple ground rules: if you need to go, go. Do not disrupt the class activities; don’t make a regular habit of going to the bathroom during class. Leaving class, for any reason, should be an usual occurrence.

Yet, it doesn’t work this way. I can predict both who will leave for the bathroom and often when. Students don’t go to the “bathroom.” Many of them go elsewhere. They make calls on their phones. On a few occasion, I have used the school’s cameras to find out where they really went and what really happened.

Students leave the room because they are bored, or they have a need to call home, or want to get a snack, or have actually made a plan to meet someone. There are many, perhaps a majority, who really do need to go to the bathroom or get a sip of water.

I have never worked in the corporate world, but I can’t imagine someone stopping a meeting or work activity to go to the bathroom. If such a thing occurs, I would hope it would be unusual; I am expecting an important call, I am ill, or there are special issues.

In their defense, students have limited time to go to the bathroom. They have short lunch periods and only five minutes to go from class to another. However, teachers are in a similar position. A little planning goes a long way. While one can’t always plan ahead, again, hopefully, that is the exception.

So perhaps my bathroom lines are a little passive aggressive. I don’t want students to leave. I use one of the oldest ones in the book, “Can I go to the bathroom?” I hope you can. What if you couldn’t! Eww! That would be uncomfortable!

Students ask if they can go to the bathroom quickly. I often reply that I will not time them so I won’t know how fast they go. I think about the old Monty Python Silly Olympics sketch with the marathon for the incontinent.

When the student who leaves regularly requests to leave the room, I sometimes respond that I was just about to suggest that they go or I say, “you are full of it.” Yup, that is what I am saying.

Sometimes, the request to go to the bathroom is simply answered with a shocked, “Not here!”

My favorite moment like this was when a student raised his hand, stopped the discussion and said, “May I go to the bathroom and fill my water bottle.” The whole class took a pause and then several people went, “Yuck!”

When you have to go, you have to go, no doubt about that. When I am a student in class or when I am in a meeting, I wait. I don’t disrupt or derail an activity by making a dramatic exit to the bathroom – and I really don’t want to miss anything.

This is probably an issue as old as schools, teachers, and students themselves: the perpetual problem of kids on the can!