Extra credit for bladder control

Parent Cafe
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<p>of course at his school going into a bathroom is an activity you'd want to avoid anyway)</p>

<p>here actually is a link to a picture of the girls bathroom at my daughters school
<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/photogalleries/localnews1259/6.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/photogalleries/localnews1259/6.html&lt;/a>
(its the 6th picture if the link doesn't work right)
I love it- it is beautiful and on the inside of every stalll door is a poem
my favorite is ( but only one of the sinks work)</p>

<p>Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.</p>

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<p>It starts early--my first grader has complained several times this year about not being allowed to go to the bathroom--during recess! Even when she says, "it's an emergency. . ." the teacher says she can't go inside the building. I know that kids tend to follow each other and they want to prevent the whole class from asking to go in, but are the teachers going to stand there and watch kids wet their pants? (D didn't, but said she was about to. . .)</p>

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<p>I remember when I was in about 5th grade when I asked to go to the bathroom because I felt ill- apparently the teacher didn't take in consideration, or know me well enough, that I wouldn't have asked in the middle of class if it wasn't an emergency.
He told me to wait till lunchtime- i tried but I threw up all over my desk .
Then I not only got to go the restroom, but they called my mother to escort me home!</p>

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<p>I don't think that this is physically possible with the amount of pressure that a bladderful of urine exerts (the bladder is a lot more muscular than an appendix, for example)...but it was a good image.</p>

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<p>bladder burst??? Is that a nice way of saying that the kid wet his pants?</p>

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<p>As I posted elsewhere, at one "good" school I know, kids have to wear green visors with the word BATHROOM in white block letters on it. Needless to say, some refuse to go. Does wonders for retention.</p>

<p>In another school, 7th grade, the teacher uses a real toilet seat as the hall pass.</p>

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<p>JLauer and Ellemenope: this article <a href="http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic2856.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic2856.htm&lt;/a> says that children under 20 may experience spontaneous bladder tears (rarely). I was reporting a description of an incident from 1959; the teacher did say the student spent time in the hospital. That's not the same as peeing your pants.</p>

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<p>so in theory vals from those schools could be the Master Bladder Manipulators.</p>

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<p>Bladder tears?!! The list of things for parents to worry about grows and grows!</p>

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<p>I have to be honest--I never used the restroom at the high school. I waited till I got home. Lived on the third floor--by about 2 and a half floors, I was sprinting!</p>

31

<p>We get bathroom passes in our Chem H class. 5 points each, 3 for the year.</p>

<p>Yeah, I guess it's unfair. Nobody ever goes to the bathroom, so basically you get 15 extra credit points. </p>

<p>It actually boosts your grade a lot. I got about 30 extra credit points altogether, and that was 4% boost? So 15 extra credit points = 2%boost?</p>

<p>Oh wow. I've never actually looked at it like that.</p>

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<p>So he who pees last, wins?</p>

<p>This is a way of dealing with a perceived problem that should be handled otherways, that can do damage to a persons physical health</p>

<p>Its a cop out at the expense of a persons health</p>

<p>If I was a parent in that school, I would lock that teacher in a room and not let them out for 5 hours...and the administration is just lazy, using physical punishment</p>

<p>This aggrevates me because I have seen what damage can be done from not being able to unrinate or drinking enough water</p>

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<p>Okay, I'm going to weigh in here as a teacher. I and most other teachers at my middle school (6-8th) use hall passes. I give out four at the beginning of each quarter and give extra credit points if they don't use them (to be sure, the extra credit is negligible, a token of the overall grade). Why do I use them? To help influence their time management skills and responsibility.</p>

<p>The hall passes are good to a)go to their locker to retrieve a book or homework they should have remembered to get at break, b) get a drink of water they should have gotten at break c) use the restroom that they should have used at break. Their breaks are every 90 minutes (nutrition break = 15 mins long; lunch = 40 mins). </p>

<p>Without hall passes, many students would do these things on class time, in the middle of a lecture, during a test, in the middle of a student presentation, etc... several times a week for the entire year (in EVERY class). This could add up to significant lost hours of instruction over the course of a quarter, semester, year.</p>

<p>Additionally, it is very disrupting to have to negotiate with a student about why they want to leave the room again, especially those students who want to leave the room all the time or those who are especially irresponsible with bringing their materials. (And I see over 100 kids a day, so it gets hard to keep track). This way, they bring up a pass with the destination written on it. I glance at it, initial and off they go. I know that they aren't abusing the privilege because I know they only have four passes. They learn to only ask/use a pass if it's truly important because the passes are a limited commodity and they are valuable if unused.</p>

<p>Am I flexible with this system? You bet. You can read it in a student's face and voice when the situation is dire (i.e. they really have to go and are out of passes or forgot them, etc...). But other times, I'm not flexible. Some of my students would love to spend 10-15 mins. out of class, walking the halls to the drinking fountain, meeting a friend in the restroom six times a day, etc... You really need to understand that not all students want to go to college, want to graduate, want to learn or want to be in school. </p>

<p>That said, I think this system is silly for AP level students, who obviously have chosen to take the most challenging curriculum, desire to be successful and are in school to learn. Hall passes for this level of student are not necessary, and their grades should accurately and strictly reflect the quality of their work, not their responsbility in managing lockers, bathroom needs, etc... After all, AP is college level curriculum and you will not find any college professor who uses hall passes or gives extra credit for them. </p>

<p>Other high school classes are comprised of different types of students, who may or may not need more monitoring, incentives, structure, etc... </p>

<p>Let's not paint all teachers who use this system as lazy or complete unfeeling idiots.</p>

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<p>I LOVE teachers. I just think giving credit for being able to hold your bladder is silly. ESPECIALLY for Highschoolers</p>

<p>And it CAN create some physical problems...on the Day of the SATs many kids were afraid to drink water for fear of having to use the bathroom and not being able too, some got headaches and cramps</p>

<p>My fear is that if the policy is dranconian, kids will look to get extra, and if is enough to bring a grade up from a C to a B, well, that is some incentive to hold it...</p>

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<p>geez. no wonder america is filled with constipation and other potty problems. i know i drink a lot of water, because i work out and it helps me focus (scientifcally proven that waater helps one learn better). luckily, i was usually allowed to go to the bathroom. but i admit, a few times when i couldnt, i have simply "let it go" (in the pants). when you gotta go, you gotta go.</p>

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<p>Maybe SATs will turn out to be like standing room onlhy European soccer crowds...</p>

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<p>Both my kids rarely used the bathroom in high school due to the problem of time. 6 minute passing period, crowded 3 story building, extremely limited number of bathrooms with only 3 toilets in them and no doors on the stalls. If you are running from one wing of floor one to 3rd floor wing two and you need to pick up your book at your locker - who has time to stand in line for those three little toilets???? It is an awful situation. I certainly understand it from the teacher's point of view, but it does make it very hard on the kids. (I also have to "limit" bathroom breaks in kindergarten. If we are "on the carpet" doing a directed lesson - never more than 20 minutes long- there are no bathroom breaks allowed, except in an emergency. It only takes a few days of trying to teach with kids getting up and down and up and down, to realize you have to put some restrictions on the activity!!!!</p>

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<p>I considered myself lucky if I could manage to get to my locker at least once in the middle of the day, I have no idea how people would have managed to use the bathroom between classes unless they had 2 classes right next to each other. During the breaks I think most of the bathrooms were full of girls smoking, anyway...some of them were more known for it than others and the one bathroom actually didn't have any doors on any of the stalls anymore.</p>

<p>Our school went through a variety of bathroom pass methods over the years. I think they pretty much assumed that anyone who wanted to go to the bathroom just wanted to spend as much time out of class as possible. One year, we each got a pass sheet every 2 weeks that had maybe about 10 spaces, and you could use it for going to the bathroom/nurse/wherever as long as you had spaces left, and when it was full you couldn't use it again until you got a new one. So you couldn't use it every day, there weren't enough spaces.</p>

<p>Then they changed to the teachers only having one pass at a time that could be used at the teacher's discretion. Our teachers either told us that we pretty much weren't allowed to use the pass at all, or that we were only allowed to use it if there wasn't a lesson in progress and we had finished our work, or if we asked at the very beginning of the class, usually before the bell rung.</p>

<p>Most of my friends and I learned to just not have to go at all, all day. The teachers made you feel like they were doing you a huge unnecessary favor by giving you the pass, and if you asked for it too much they'd stop giving it to you. I got lucky a few years because my art class had a bathroom in the actual classroom that we could use whenever. Or in gym class if you changed really quickly. I wish they'd given us extra credit for it, if we were going through all the extra effort.</p>

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<p>Blah, I can see that nothing has changed. You have described my hs situation to a tee.</p>

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<p>I teach at a university in Europe (free tuition BTW) my students have a half an hour between most courses. But many walk out in the middle of class casually for 3 to 5 min--for the bathroom, for a smoke, to use their cell phones????--it's not unusual for 3 or 4 out of 50 students to do this during a 90 min. class. I find this disruptive and rude --in situations that are not emergencies. I figure I am over 50 and in over 20 years of teaching, I have never had to rush out of a 90 min session to use the bathroom--I claim no special bladder superiority, just the ability to prioritize. I tell them to please try "to take care of their personal needs " betwen classes. (It's not just my courses, colleagues report the same)-- would the attitude be different if they had to pay for tuition on an American scale?</p>