Bathroom Break

As a teacher, there are many things that either annoy me or hinder the learning that is supposed to occur in my classroom. Sometimes both of these are one in the same. The top of the list has to be the never ending requests from students to use the restroom. It seems like I can't teach for two minutes before somebody is raising their hand and asking to leave the room. As a teacher, I must quickly decide if this is a ploy to get out of the room due to boredom or if the request is legitimate. If I had to guess, I'd say 75% of my students abuse restroom privileges. When students are constantly leaving and re-entering the classroom it's quite difficult to have any continuity to lessons and is downright disruptive. It's a problem that's as old as the educational process itself. What is a teacher to do?

I have jokingly said that we should catheterize the students each day when they come in the door. Knowing that won't happen (haha), what other options are there? Trying to limit trips to the restroom works for a while, but sure as shootin' some little rascal will tell you it's an emergency and do the "pee pee dance" until I relent and send him to the bathroom. We've tried giving the kids popsicle sticks as restroom passes (two per person/per day), but that doesn't seem to work either. I read about one teacher who made the students carry a toilet seat to the restroom every time they went. This practice was quickly halted because it was humiliating to the students (oh brother!). That's why I found the following comic so amusing. As a teacher I've always wanted to do something like this, but obviously knowing I never could. It's okay to dream, though. Right? I think it would definitely cut down on the hundreds of trips to the restroom.