Posted on 01/20/2012 8:47:44 AM PST by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
NEW YORK -- Parents at a Brooklyn elementary school are furious over a fifth-grade teachers bathroom policy that prohibits students from jetting to the john more than three times a week.
The stringent policy is limited to the Coney Island classroom of PS 90 teacher Stephanie Warner and is not schoolwide, reports The New York Post.
However, the teachers in-depth e-mail explanation of the program to school principal Greta Hawkins earlier this month did not appear to meet with any resistance on the part of the school administrator, according to the paper.
Under Warners potty policy, students are given three vouchers a week that entitle them to bathroom visits...
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.msnbc.msn.com ...
any child that suffers urine infections from having to hold it, should present their hospital or doctor bill to the school and teacher. That is completely stupid!
There is nothing too petty for a liberal to want to control.
is the teacher held to the same standard?
We’re talking eleven years old and younger. Geeze, this idiot is qualified to teach kids. But I’m not. Got it.
I believe now days girls are already getting their female problems by the 5th grade. This is not an enforceable rule. Even 3 per day would not be enforceable.
Truly for all your contempt of Europe, you are circling the same drain that we are.
Somebody please plug the hole.
Adults have better control of timing their need to use the bathroom than eleven-year-olds do.
If the students are limited to three vouchers for the week, the teacher should set an example have no vouchers for the week.
Hell, I only allow 3 per term! (4 1/2 weeks)
A fifth grader should be able to time his/her bathroom visits to between classes, lunch period, recess, etc. Three excuses to leave a class in session per week sounds more than reasonable to me.
These kids would get better treatment as prisoners.
My elementary school days were from 1961-1967 (1st-6th grade) so I know my memory may not be the sharpest but I recall that bathroom breaks were taken en route to the playground for recess at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. You had to do a real “pee-pee dance” to convince the teacher to let you go at any other time. Any child that did a dance three times a week would have been referred to the school nurse and a note sent home to parents.
I had a teacher that controlled it this way.
There was one and only one bathroom pass. If you needed to go, you simply got up, took the pass from the pin that it was on, signed out on the log and went. When you came back, you put the pass back on it’s peg and lined through your name.
If you missed something while you were out - tough. You had to get with another student to find out what was covered.
If you went during a test - tough. You still had to turn the test in at the end of the period and not allowances were given.
If someone else was using the pass - tough. You had to wait till they came back. If someone kept taking the pass or staying too long, the class would have words with the individual and correct the behaviour.
Once again, shotgun management by a teacher. If she was having issues concerning one or more children abusing the rest room privileges then she should have addressed it individually with the child and his/her parents. A child needs to go when a child needs to go. Ask any pediatrician about the medical concerns “holding” one’s urine or fecal matter. It isn’t a “healthy” idea. Personally, if this had been one of my kid’s teacher, I would have told them to walk out. Ask for permission, if denied then walk the heck out, go to the bathroom, go to the office and call me.
Well, that’s what the nuns used to tell us back in the early 60s: You should take care of your needs at home. Of course, some of the nuns ended up with a flood of urine on the floor - which didn’t improve their mood, lol!
That’s what I say. Classes aren’t very long. They have ample breaks to go to the restroom. It’s a disruption for kids to be going in and out of the classroom to pee.
Why am I not surprised that those who are not in the classroom would jump to wild conclusions and accusations without any basis in facts.
I am no fan of public schools (and I was a public school teacher for 14 years). I despise the dictatorial brainwashing going on in those schools. But if you have never been a teacher in said classroom, you have no idea what you are talking about.
When I was still teaching, I knew several teachers who adopted a very similar policy. But you see, reporters (and apparently Freepers) like to make accusations without getting the “rest of the story”. Here is how such a policy is generally implemented (very effectively without bursting little kids’ bladders or worsening infections, etc.):
- Each child is “credited” with three “passes” per week to the restroom to be used during class time. Some teachers I know called them “emergency passes” instead of bathroom passes to help keep a focus on what they were for.
- Regular bathroom breaks are scheduled throughout the school day including lunch/snack/recess time as well (adequate for the vast majority of kids without needing the above passes).
- If a child has a medical condition that he/she cannot function within the above “system”, then other arrangements are made (usually requiring a doctor’s explanation).
Now - why would such an “evil” system be necessary? There are many - here are just a few:
Anyone who has ever been in a group (particularly children) knows that the “need” is contagious, just like a yawn. One child who “needs” to go to the bathroom leads to half the kids asking to go. With constant interruptions, the instructional time becomes fragmented and ineffective.
Second - with liability and court decisions, students must be supervised at all times. Even young children get into serious trouble. Who is going to watch that child head out the door, down the hall, and into the bathroom? The classroom teacher? Then how is he/she going to teach the remaining children? I guess the schools could hire a brigade of “Potty Police” to monitor children going to and from the bathroom all day... it’s just tax dollars...
If a teacher or school had such a policy - and it limited children to 3 bathroom breaks per week - PERIOD - no recess bathroom - no lunch bathroom - no any other time - then heck, even teachers couldn’t live with that.
So - lets get back to fighting the liberal/marxist indoctrination going on in the public schools. Lets return to running pedophile teachers/coaches out. Lets kick the federal government out of the public schools. Lets work on returning God to the classrooms...
But we waste our time fighting battles that are not even real problems. We are so jaded and frustrated with the vast list of real problems, that we just jump on the bandwagon to assume everything is bad/wrong.
Of course, this is how we Conservatives keep getting screwed over in elections - we bicker about the non-issues, and lose on the real issues...
My nephew had a teaching position in a school in the Philadelphia area. The trips to the bathroom were an excuse to disrupt the whole class. You have no idea what goes on in some of these urban schools. It doesn’t even resemble what most of us think of as a public school.
My nephew had one girl in one of his classes that would ask to go to the restroom every day. Actually, she didn’t ask, she just got up and announced that she was going, then when she finally returned, she would loudly explain in vivid detail, what she did in the bathroom. When my nephew would try to tell her that the class didn’t want to hear about it, the girl would go on about how her granny told her that it was a healthy thing to disuss bathroom activities and then go on a rant about that. The girl took up most of the class time, discussing her bowl movements, including texture and color. There was no way to shut her down and the principal refused to help.
Dude....
My SIL is a special ed teacher in an elementary school (I will also admit that she is a complete moron). She got into some hot water involving a similar rule. No bathroom breaks during class. She allowed several children over the course of a semester to wet/or soil themselves. Her idea was that perhaps... one incident of soiling oneself would teach them to use the bathroom at home or hold it. No thought of their humiliation or the teasing that would occur later. No thought of the pain they must have felt holding it until they couldn’t. What caused her to change this ridiculous policy was when the parents of one child made a complaint to the county police over child abuse and the principal told her to knock it the heck off. (like I said, she is a moron).
Agreed. The kids are simply abusing the system (breaks) to get out of class. Teach em to plan ahead.
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