Ask any high school teacher, and they’ll tell you one of the most annoying rituals of the day is students coming up before and during class asking if they can run to the bathroom. Not only is it disruptive, but teachers have to take time away from their work to write out pass after pass after pass. The whole process is frustrating, time-consuming, and tedious. Without a good bathroom pass policy, you can waste class time and lose your sanity.

Never Write Another Bathroom Pass

That’s why, about halfway through this year, I decided there must be a better way of handling the bathroom pass situation. As it stood, I was taking on all of the responsibility for the bathroom passes myself. I was the one who decided if the students could leave class, I monitored the length of time they were gone, I wrote out the passes, and I disciplined those students who took too much time to return. It was too much for my A.D.D. mind to track while I was trying to focus on teaching. I decided that, if I wanted my classroom to be more efficient, I should move the responsibility of the bathroom passes from me to my students.

But wait . . . you might be thinking there is no way you could trust most high school students to decide for themselves when they could leave class, and I’m right there with you. How in the world can you monitor them and keep them accountable? Well, after much thought, I found a strategy that does just that, and it has worked so much better than my old plan. Seriously, I wish I had done this years ago.

This bathroom pass policy is simple enough, but it required a slight leap of faith to be able to trust that students would use it appropriately. Basically, I placed a sign-out sheet in my room and I told the students that they could sign out to the bathroom without asking as long as they stuck to the following five basic rules.

Rule #1: They had to take a bathroom pass with them.

This rule made it so that only one student could be gone at a time. I made a simple 3 x 4 inch bathroom pass out of some old watercolor paper. I wrote “Bathroom Pass” in Sharpie, along with my room number and a reminder to the students about signing out before leaving. I put packing tape over the front and back to “laminate” it and then stuck it in a place the students could see it, clipped by a magnet on the white board.

Rule #2: They could only be gone a maximum of six minutes.

I also put a reminder about this rule on the sign out sheet and on the pass. Six minutes is plenty of time for students to be gone, but I also encourage them to let me know if they are having an emergency that might cause them to be gone longer.

Rule #3: They had to sign out legibly and sign back in.

If I can’t read the students names or the times at which they signed out, I’m not going to be able to monitor them. Students also have to sign in and mark the time so that they know I will be checking to make sure they weren’t gone longer than 6 minutes. If they don’t sign out legibly or correctly, they lose their privileges altogether.

Rule #4: No signing out during the first or last 5 minutes of class or during lecture.

This rule keeps students in their seats during times when they need to be paying attention, like during lecture. It also keeps them focused at the beginning of class and less antsy at the end of class.

Rule #5: No pit stops

This should be an obvious rule, but many students will try to kill two birds with one stone while they are out in the halls with a pass. If students go anywhere other than the bathroom, they will lose their pass privileges in full.

Since enacting this policy, the classroom experience has improved for myself and for my students. I no longer start each class with students at my desk asking if they can use the bathroom. I can now know that all of the students will be in their seats and ready to hear classroom announcements during the first and last five minutes of class. Also, I no longer have to interrupt my teaching or my work to write endless bathroom passes.

Stop Distractions and Give Students More Responsibility

The students also like this bathroom pass policy because it doesn’t treat them like children. It puts much of the responsibility on their shoulders and gives them more freedom in their own choices and time management. That said, there are enough rules and consequences to make sure they follow the guidelines.

I also love that this bathroom pass policy leaves me with a detailed sign out sheet for my class. It’s much better than when I would just write passes and the students would throw them away upon returning. I now know which students left during class, when they left, and when they returned. It’s just another good tool for tracking what happens in my classroom.

It’s amazing what a dramatic difference a change in something as small as a bathroom policy can make in the classroom. So much of teaching stress stems from classroom management issues so when you find the right technique it can make everything run more smoothly.

What are your thoughts on this bathroom pass policy? Have you tried something similar or better? I’d love to hear any comments or ideas.