Teacher challenge in digital age: Bathroom 'passports'
If you gotta go, you gotta go.
Unless, that is, you've had your bathroom passport checked three times this quarter at Wredling Middle School in St. Charles.
That's a new rule staff writer Jim Fuller came across on a mom's Facebook page. Melissa Omalley Walker's son came home with a slip of paper - honestly, called a passport - letting students know they were allowed to leave class only three times per quarter for a bathroom break. After that - or lose the pass - and you're out of luck. She vented on Facedbook, pointing out her son has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and anxiety; sometimes he uses the bathroom two or three times an hour.
Walker was flooded with mostly sympathetic replies from other parents. Some noted four-minute passing periods make a bathroom break all but impossible. "When nature calls, it calls," said Samantha Tubekis, mother of a student at Haines Middle School, which is not air-conditioned. "They want them to drink a lot of water. Well, guess what happens then?"
This story and the resultant stir (it was among our most-viewed online stories on Thursday/Friday) once again underscores what's so right and yet so wrong with everyone having a forum.
Says a lot, too, about the challenge of being an educator in the digital age.
Back in the pre-Facebook days, a parent might not have been inclined to ring us up to complain about the injustices of limited bathroom breaks. Today, things have changed. Fuller, who covers St. Charles Unit District 303, routinely posts his stories on his Facebook page, and people like Walker sometimes give their views. In this case, she posted the photo of the passport on Fuller's news feed.
The conversation, prompted along by Fuller, continued to flourish. This is something he generally does on his page "in hopes of it having a community bulletin board-type feel and sparking conversation." That's good community journalism.
When the story was pitched at our morning news meeting, animated discussion ensued. This, as we often say in the news business, is a sign we've got a "talker" - something people are likely to read and debate. Accordingly, at our afternoon news meeting, the decision was made to run the story on the front page, in all Friday editions.
So, that seems to be the upside to the bathroom break debate: An interesting issue got a thorough airing.
But in true social media fashion, this online debate might have added some fuel to the fire. Fuller says some parents - apparently not worried about anonymity - were announcing plans on Facebook to forge the passes, gaming the system. But this passport was not some mandate from the superintendent or even the principal; it was a procedure devised by teachers to combat a significant problem: students routinely asking to go to the bathroom, then leaving class to do other stuff. I showed Fuller's story to my sister, a longtime middle school teacher.
It prompted a rather lengthy and passionate reply. Here's just a portion: "A 14 year old (without health issues) can get their business done in four minutes," she said. "You cannot imagine what these kids can get done in four minutes. We have a four-minute passing period and it's way too long. That's too much time for that group to be together in the hallways."
Just another perspective on this particular "talker."
jdavis@dailyherald.com