Arguably, this is the least desirable thing a teacher is required to do in the daily performance of her duties. Nobody likes to take children to the restroom. First, you have to monitor the restroom and the children to prevent mischief from happening  there. Second, you have to walk a line of children to the restroom, wait for them to use the facilities, remind them to wash their hands, and walk them back. That is fifteen golden minutes that most teachers could use more effectively. One of the most frustrating things about taking children to the restroom is for them to not even go inside the walls but to immediately stand in the line to return, because you can be sure that within a few minutes of returning to the classroom, that hand shoots up and asks to go to the restroom. The days of taking a hall pass and going to the restroom alone are gone. Now there is more pressure than ever for a teacher to maintain visual contact with every child every minute of the day so if that is the rule in your school, children can’t be sent alone to the restroom. I never thought I would see the day that I would stand in front of a classroom with a cup of water explaining how a bladder works to a group of children but here we are. I articulate that our bodies are machines that are constantly processing the food we eat and the water we drink into energy. That which is not necessary for creating energy is what we leave in the restroom. I pour a little water in the cup and ask the students if it is full. They all say no. I can continue to add more and more water but when the cup is full I will absolutely have to empty the cup. In fact, the fuller the cup, the more emptying it becomes an uncomfortable emergency. I go ahead and tell them the times of day they will be going to the restroom. I tell them the same reason their mom makes everyone use the restroom before you head out on a long trip is to preserve the travel time, we are going to do the same thing with our instructional time. When we go to the restroom, you are expected to empty your bladder whether or not it is full. Doing so will just give us a longer time before we all have to go again. Nobody wants to be the student that a teacher and twenty-two friends have to walk to the restroom and wait for him to use it when we all just went. As disgusting as this conversation is, have it. It could save you hours of frustration throughout the year.

For our PEC students, this could be an entirely different conversation. I have had several  multi handicapped  students ( in wheelchairs)  over the years who had urinary catheters which were used to drain the bladder. All schools now have a nurse, who will support these students, but “back in the day”, we did not. A PEC staff person had to be trained in this procedure.

In addition, I have had many students over the years who had “ toileting schedules”. I took them several times before lunch and several times after lunch( these times were literally written out on his/her schedule). At the school I spent most of my teaching career at, we had two restrooms available in the walkway that connected two separate classrooms. This made the “toileting schedule” easier to implement. Be sure to include the PEC staff and necessary medical staff if you have special needs learners with these issues.

Pamela Webster, M. Ed., SPED