There are all kinds of teachers, just like there are all kinds of people. More obvious words have rarely been spoken. In this profession, it is hard to conceal your true, inner self most of the time. An old friend of mine told me that I was a “pushover” sometimes in my classroom because I would give in to begging and pleading and that kind of stuff. It’s true–for many years I did just kind of cave, especially on seemingly trivial issues.

Kid: “Oh Ms. Silverman, can I please, please move back to my old seat?”

Me: “No!”

Kid: “But pleeeeeease?”

Me: “Okay.”

Man, they couldn’t mess with me.

Frankly, I don’t like being “in charge,” or at least in a blatant way. It started early on in my teaching that I felt uncomfortable being controlling. On the other hand, I can’t stand chaos in a classroom; it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. When students get out of their seats, make messes, speak out of turn, and those kinds of things, I start twitching uncomfortably like a crazy person. So a while back, I had to figure out ways to deceive my students into thinking that they were making their own choices, and that being positive and cooperative was the only cool way to be. This type of deception became habit for me.

Let me illustrate: I never could stand it when kids would bug me to go to the bathroom, for several reasons: first, why should I have to give someone permission to do a bodily necessity, like I was some kind of Grand PuBa? That just seems tyrannical and kind of ridiculous. Second, I am terrible at multi-tasking and/or getting interrupted. If I’m in the middle of some lesson or even grading a paper or even taking a half-minute snooze, and a student comes up to ask me for a bathroom pass, I lose my concentration and often forget what I was doing. I really had to develop a different system!

Thus, I created my “Bathroom Pass Method.” I’ll try to simplify:

I make a sheet of six pre-printed passes in small squares with blank spaces for student name, class room number, date, and time, and then a space for teacher signature. At this juncture, money was spent (as per usual)–I had to purchase a colorful (green or purple) signature stamp from Office Max. Thinking back, I used up quite a few teacher signature stamps during my career. They were in tatters by the time I was finished with them from overuse.

Now to the bane of all teachers…I had to make enough copies of the pass sheet for every student in every class, so about 150 copies. Next, I had to place my stamped signature (in green) on EVERY sheet. Thankfully, as I wised up with time, I had student assistants stamp the sheets for me. Some kids feel very groovy doing stuff like that, like it’s zen or something .

At the beginning of each year, I would hand them out and tell the students that THESE were their hall/bathroom passes for the year or half-year, depending on teacher preference, and that THEY have to choose when to use them.They had to fill in their names on each pass in advance. Once they are gone, that’s on them. And if they lose them, same. (Granted, once in a while an emergency would occur when some miscreant lost his passes and he was about to poop his pants. I had to make an exception in that case because we know what fun flatulence is in a closed room!) When the students came back from the outing, they had to give me the used pass, and I kept the germy, wrinkled, used passes in a box just for my records. For example, if a kid tried to forge her own, I had proof of the already used ones.

Ergo, with this system in place the students didn’t have to interrupt me, and I didn’t have to play the big bad meanie teacher deeming whether someone should be allowed to go take a leak (or roam the hallways pestering other people). My admin accepted my method after I explained it to them, and from then on….peace in the realm. At least in the area of going to the loo.

Sometimes, it can be just the small things that need fixing in order to create a larger nirvana.

Here is a link to my store where you can find the templates for the pass system I use. You could make it yourself, but instead, you could just benefit from the work I’ve already done.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/literary-ladder-lessons

Here is an article about Bathroom Passes:

How to Stop Writing Restroom Passes (and Keep Students in Class)