A response to readers: Adults outside of education often think that students should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever those students say they need to go. It’s important to understand, though, that some students will go every single hour of the day if allowed, once per class. They build the bathroom request into the hour as their own personal break. I suspect a few students would be happy to spend the whole day in the bathroom.

In terms of learning, if the student is allowed to leave during a lecture, other students will want to leave during the lecture, resulting in explanations of new material that are peppered with multiple bathroom requests, enough to break the flow in the presentation of the material. They can’t just go. Students need a bathroom pass. Writing or endorsing that pass takes time.

Students can’t learn new material while in the bathroom, either. If two or more students go at the same time, all sorts of problems may be created as they put on make-up, socialize and just generally blow off class. Girls are more trouble than boys, too. When they trot out the time-of-the-month excuse, teachers tend to roll over without further comment. Male teachers, in particular, may drop the subject of those lost 10 – 15 minutes of class time like a hot potato.

My current policy is simple. Bathroom breaks are not permitted while I am speaking or while other students are presenting an idea. If we do classwork and if a student shows me that they are making good progress on that classwork, then I will let them go.

We want to provide positive reinforcement. But that kid who never does the homework? At a certain point, the positive reinforcement needs to be replaced by a dose of honesty. People who don’t do their work get fired in the real world, not coaxed to work harder.

Some kids are absolutely allergic to hard work.

“That’s too much work!” those kids say when they get a long assignment. I really don’t understand why they are complaining. They don’t do the work anyway.

I know who will return the homework. I know who usually won’t. What I’m a little unclear on is why my nonreturners have to complain. What work? Often the assignment never even makes it out of their locker.

Eventually, I am calling home, making out homework logs, and issuing daily reminders. Parents are checking in. And lots of the time, I still never see that work.

P.S. I read this and think maybe readers will think that this is my problem and not a general problem. I assure anyone reading that homework is a huge problem in our lowest-scoring schools. I have colleagues who no longer give homework because they gave up on getting it back.

I am passing back papers from the end of last week. There are a lot of them and without thinking I say, “This is too many papers.” The class thought this was pretty funny.

“There’s a solution for that,” one student said.
“Yeah, stop giving us all that work,” another said.
A third chimed in, “It’s all your fault you know.”

I just grinned.