Student disciplined for unauthorized potty break

[The Straight Story]

Student disciplined for unauthorized potty break


A 12-year-old Klein ISD student is facing one month in an alternative campus as punishment for relieving himself in a water bottle after his teacher refused to let him leave class to use the rest room, according the boys' attorney.

On Jan. 13, the seventh-grader repeatedly asked the teacher if he could go to the bathroom and he was denied, said Houston attorney Bill Hawkins. The teacher also told him she would write him up as truant if he left the classroom, he said.

"The really outrageous part is that she told him, "I hope you pee on yourself,"" Hawkins said.

He said the student's parents, who do not want their names released, contacted him last week to appeal the school's decision. An appeal hearing is scheduled Wednesday, he said.

District officials on Tuesday declined to discuss the case, but released a written statement.



http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Student-disciplined-for-unauthorized-potty-break-2683496.php

[virgogal]

1. This teacher should be fired.

[rfranklin]

2. The teacher is the one in need of discipline if she said that...

I remember having a few crappy teachers like that.

[mzteris]

3. Every year my daughter was in school

I personally told every teacher she had that she had a bladder problem and should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever she asked. If they felt she was "abusing the privilege", then call me.

(She did have a bladder problem.)

[Ilsa]

4. Lots of unanswered questions here.

Does the kids regularly make a nuisance of himself to disrupt class? Does he frequently try to get out of class with excuses like needing a potty break, wanting to see the nurse or other auxiliary personnel?

Does he have a medical condition like diabetes? Then he needs a plan in place to deal with an issue like Hyperuricemia.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. It sure doesn't sound like the kid's first incident, based on the charges:

"Engaging in serious or persistent acts of disobedience or disorderly behavior which may prove detrimental to the school, harmful to health and safety, and inhibiting the rights of others."

[Ilsa]

6. This goes on alot in our schools.

But the teacher shouldn't have told him that she hopes he pees on himself.

We have some serious discipline issues in a lot of schools. Kids disrupt classes to go see the nurse for no reason, etc, except to dodge class. In some schools the nurse is seeing 10-15% of the student population in a day.

[Saving Hawaii]

33. My French teacher in high school always gave me detentions for "insubordination".

That wasn't even a valid reason to hand out detentions. But that's the only thing he ever wrote them up for.

Great teacher for what it's worth. Talented and very charismatic. Even the kids getting slapped with insubordination detentions every week wanted to take his class.

[Louisiana1976]

7. I'd put that teacher in detention and not allow her to

go to the bathroom when she needs to go.

[beyurslf]

8. She was going to write him up as truant...

tells me this kid abuses every system possible to stay out of class. i work with truant kids--bravo to adults who stand up to them and say no.

[mysuzuki2]

9. if he didn't really have to go, he wouldn't have peed in the water bottle.

I am usually loath to criticize others here on DU, but it sounds to me like you are part of the problem.

[beyurslf]

10. If hadn't cried wolf 1000 times before, she would have let him go.

He probably forced himself to pee! How many truant kids have you worked with? Zero tolerance, zero.

[MicaelS]

11. Just how in the FUCK do you know "he cried wolf 1000 times before"?

Do you have special knowledge of this actual case the rest of us are not aware of? Please share it with us.

Assholes in teaching like this teacher are why many parents despise teachers, and don't give a flying fuck about teachers or their demands for better working conditions.

If my kid was forced in to pee into a bottle, the lawsuits I would unleash on everyone in that school would be the least of their concerns.

The idea that anyone should be forced to soil themselves because of some petty tyrant masquerading as a teacher, or truant officer, or other school official, is obscene.

[beyurslf]

13. I don't, I inferred it as I said in my previous post.

How do you know the teacher is an asshole? How do you do the teacher is a tyrant? Or petty? Maybe, that teacher is doing his job. how do you know the child is not truant, as the article says? Like I said, truant kids need 0 tolerance and that includes for "bathroom" breaks. You don't get truant by being a good student who hasn't abused every possible angle to get out school.

Just this week, I worked with a truant girl (all of 13) who got headlice from a neighbor. she "saved" some of the lice so when her mom cleaned, she could reinfest herself with it to get out of school. she did this for a week before confessing. When we finally got that cleared up, she became the "victim" of a "bully" at school. she pulled the bathroom crap months ago and I personally told her to wet herself if she couldn't get the bathroom on a passing period. am I petty asshole tyrant too?


maybe parents who sue over every little thing that happens to their kids without regard to why their child is in that situation is what is wrong.

[Fumesucker]

17. If you told a kid to wet themselves then yes , in my opinion you are a tyrant..

Zero tolerance means zero intelligence..

[beyurslf]

24. She gets 6 minutes in between classes to go to the bathroom and the school is not that large.

She has plenty of time if she wants to use it wisely. I am sure this boy is in a similar situation. They also get passes in their agendas to use, so non-truant kids can go during class on the occassion that they didn't get it done during passing. Truant kids use those passes in week 1. Zero tolerance means the kid has exhausted all other options. If I am working with you on truancy, it means the state has intervened and you are in foster care over it. Do you know how many chances a kid gets before that happens? Do you know how much it costs the state? Exactly how long do we go letting children make terrible decisions before someone says, "Enough!"

[Fumesucker]

27. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

I have been a life long learner and yet I hated school so much I never even went to my HS graduation, have never seen the diploma I earned over forty years ago. School is sheer misery for a lot of kids, so miserable in fact that kids fairly often kill themselves rather than face more school.

[beyurslf]

29. Yes, and there are professionals who get to assess the difference

between misery and truancy. I wish people would let us do our jobs.

[Fumesucker]

30. I wasn't miserable at home..

But school was torment, if I could have gotten out of going I would have done so.

Telling someone to wet themselves does not sound like professional conduct or language to me.

[Ms. Toad]

34. You are correct. It is not professional conduct.

I taught for 11 years in a very tough school. Yes, I had lots of students who abused (or tried to abuse) the system and found excuses to leave the classroom repeatedly. I would NEVER have told a child to wet him or herself, and any teacher who thinks that is appropriate behavior needs to take a break from teaching.

[Arkana]

48. If you think your job involves telling a kid who desperately needs to go to the bathroom

that he should just wet himself, then you are drunk with power and need to find a different job.

I say this as the son of two public school teachers who grew up revering public education. If you are such a giant tool that you get off on telling your students they can't go to the bathroom, then you really should not be teaching.

[NutmegYankee]

65. 6 minutes?

Half the women I know can't take a piss in 6 minutes.

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. No one forced this kid to pee in a water bottle

He made that choice all by himself.

[uppityperson]

72. True. He could have simply peed his pants. I mean, really, the choice was his, right?

[Posteritatis]

14. I love how every time a school discipline story comes up people start making up the facts. (nt)

[Occulus]

15. Zero tolerance means zero thought.

On your part.

[A Simple Game]

18. Some people love zero tolerance, means they don't have to make a decision.

Also takes away most of the responsibility.

It should also take away half of the pay.

[beyurslf]

25. No, it places the responsibility where it belongs--

on the kid who chose not to use the bathroom when he had the opportunity and who chose to do it in class.

[A Simple Game]

28. More responsibility for a 12 year old than the teacher?

No wonder they take the responsibility to make a decision away from the adults. This teacher obviously didn't act like an adult when they said they hoped the child peed his pants.

The child obviously has a problem. All people are unique. One solution does not fit all. I can see them doing the same thing to a 6 year old. How old does a child have to be to gain full responsibility? Myself, I think the adults should be in charge.

Now that may have actually been the best solution, but I don't know, and I doubt that you do either. We also don't know if he did have an opportunity to use the bathroom between classes, may have got out of the prior class late, been bullied, didn't realize how bad he had to go... who knows, certainly we don't.

The one thing I do know, if indeed he had to pee and wasn't faking it, the humiliation he suffered at the hands of that teacher will scar him for life!

[Saving Hawaii]

37. Do you think there should be a transition during high school from "zero tolerance"?

I can understand such a policy in middle school or grade school, but sometime during high school it really doesn't make quite as much sense anymore. Students should be developing a sense of what their rights as a human being are and hopefully how to responsibly use them. And for a junior or senior in high school, I don't think responsible use of bathroom privileges is entirely limited to a desperate urge to urinate. Sometimes people really do need a break for their mental health. I know I did. Maybe there's some truth to that for younger adults as well, but I can understand the value of discipline for that age group.

[pipi_k]

60. You don't know that.

Maybe all the times he asked to use the bathroom he really did, and then afterward wandered the halls instead of going back to the classroom.

Knowing how stupid some school officials can be, perhaps he was discovered in his wanderings, taken back to the classroom, where the teacher said she had allowed him out to use the bathroom, and (wrongly) assumed he hadn't really used the bathroom at all.

Believe me, I have lots of experience with people who punish based on what they THINK they "know" rather than on the real facts.

[joshcryer]

32. Ahh, gotta love institutional education.

[Initech]

12. What is wrong with some people? When you gotta go, you gotta go!

[tabbycat31]

16. This happened to me before

I asked three times to go to the bathroom, and my teacher (1st grade) repeatedly said no. I wound up pissing all over the floor and got in trouble.

At HS graduation, I was reminded of it.

[Honeycombe8]

19. Sounds like there was some history there with that student. And yes...

a young man will pee in a bottle just to shock and awe. He COULD have left to go to the bathroom, anyway, rather than pee in a bottle. He may have been acting what he thought was cute.

Who knows. Not enuf info. I doubt the incident as related, though. It doesn't make sense. And as Judge Judy says, "If it doesn't make sense...it's not true." No doubt the incident was investigated.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. Geez. He peed in a water bottle. In class.

And some genius calls that "unauthorized"???



If you want your child in class with a kid who whips it out in public and pees in a water bottle, then go ahead and complain that he was punished. If you find this grossly inappropriate (not to mention unsanitary) then you don't get to complain about the punishment.

As for the teacher not letting him use the restroom, that's a standard policy in most schools. The kids are allowed to use the restroom when they change classes. Teachers who send kids out of class to the restroom are violating school policy.

And for the record, when I have a student who claims they absolutely have to use the restroom NOW, I treat it as a medical emergency and send them to the nurse.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

22. Let us all worship at the alter of administrative policy!

At my school if we needed the washroom we were to quietly leave and return to the room without disrupting the class, it seemed to work splendidly well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. Good for you

There are ways to change policy. Whipping out your penis in class and peeing in front of your peers into a water bottle would probably not do much to change the restroom policy. Just a hunch of course since I don't work in this particular school.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

26. I'm certainly not condoning that...

But the idea that anyone over the age of six, who isn't an elected Republican requires formal oversight of their bathroom use is ridiculous.

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. I take it you've never been in a school restroom after it's been vandalized

or had to clean it up.

[Arkana]

46. Doesn't matter.

You don't punish the 95% who actually do have to go to the bathroom for the sake of stopping the 5% who are going to snort a line of coke or smear shit on the walls. You just don't. Not unless you're an asshole.

[proud2BlibKansan]

59. Tell that to administrators who make these policies

[joeglow3]

47. Maybe we should make kids clean bathrooms so they respect it

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

58. and vandalism only occurs during class time?

When by process of elimination the probable suspect might be more easily identified?

[tblue37]

71. Or as a site for drug sales, or for bullying of other kids, or

for hook-ups between kids.

I think many people do not realize how out of control kids are in some schools these days, or how beleaguered the teachers are as they try to contain the disruptors sufficiently to actually teach something to the kids who want to learn.

Teachers are trying to push back the tide with a rake, and they're yelled at by everyone for not being able to do it. And then when something like this comes up, everyone assumes the poor innocent kid is being bullied by the teacher.

Maybe that is what happened--or maybe the teacher snapped after relently disruptive behavior by this kid day after day, week after week, month after month. And I speak as someone who must use the restroom frequently--and without delay.

Yes, some teachers are bullies who abuse their power--but some kids and their parents are also bullies who abuse their power, too, and in recent years I have seen many more of the latter than of the former.

Without more reliable information, I would not draw conclusions about this incident. But I will say that nowadays most teachers do not say such things (or refuse bathroom breaks) for no reason at all. With cell phones around and with parents and kids suing at the drop of a hat and administrators unwilling to back up the teachers, teachers tend to be too timid rather than too fierce in dealing with out of control students, so when I read about a teacher snapping like this, I often suspect that the kid has been pushing buttons for a very long time.

"The Inmates Are Running the Asylum"
http://www.teacherblue.homestead.com/inmates.html

[Ms. Toad]

36. Please read the article. n/t

[Ms. Toad]

35. You might want to read the article.

He did not "whip it out in public."

[proud2BlibKansan]

43. Anywhere but the privacy of a restroom

is unacceptable.

At least it is to me.

[Ms. Toad]

52. There is a difference between

"whipping it out" and discretely hiding a bottle in his pants and peeing in it without exposing anything after repeatedly being denied a pass to the bathroom.

Describing his actions as "whipping it out" or exposing his penis is inflammatory and misleading.

[pipi_k]

61. I've always had

urgency issues, ever since childhood.

Peed myself in Kindergarten one day. Had to be walked home by a second grader to change my clothing.

In 6th grade I nearly peed myself while trying to do math problem at the blackboard. Luckily, when I asked the teacher to let me use the bathroom, I must have looked desperate enough...actually I think I was almost in tears.

As a teenager, I peed myself quite a few times.

I'm 59 and still have urgency issues. Maybe even worse now.

One minute I don't feel anything. The next...watch out! It's been like that all this time.

In the lower grades, we didn't change classrooms. We got to use the bathroom whenever the teacher said we could.

In junior high and high school, we did change classrooms and I could go every hour if I needed to. Which I often did.

[lonestarnot]

38. My little mommie fixed up a teacher once for doing the same thing to me, but I peed on her floor.

Somebody's mommie should have fixed that old gal too. I was in the second grade. A little different from a seventh grader. What if he had a medical condition, should the teacher have been apprised of his sichiation? Some facts appear to be missing.

[Ms. Toad]

53. A medical condition is not the only reason

he might have needed to use the bathroom urgently.

Most of the time I have no issues (and I have no predisposing medical condition). Occasionally, my bladder fills (1-2 cups) every 15 minutes for a couple of hours or so, and when it acts up it doesn't matter if I have had any fluids recently or not - so I can't even moderate it by not deliberately dehydrating ahead of classes (which isn't really healthy anyway). I recall college classes 30+ years ago that I had to walked out of three times in 50 minutes because each time I could not last any longer. The most recent time was heading into surgery about a year ago - when I had been NPO for 12 hours. In the two hours between arriving and being put under, I emptied a full bladder 5 times.

As to being notified - yes, the teacher should have been notified. We did that with our daughter whenever we received a Draconian bathroom policy, because she does have a medical condition which may requires her to dash first and ask for permission later. But - an urgent need is not have been due to a medical condition.

[pipi_k]

62. Irritable bladder...

that's what I call mine.

I can never tell what will set it off.

Sometimes it's anxiety...I literally have to go like every 15 minutes. Not a full bladder...just a few ounces...but I still get a feeling like I'll pee myself if I don't go.

Other times I can go an hour...two hours...maybe even four overnight. I wake up at least 3 times a night...have done that for years.

In total, though, my bladder only holds about 4 to 5 ounces before it gets difficult to hold in.

I've been reduced to carrying around one of those little female urinary devices (see "Go Girl" online) just in case I need to pee by the side of the road or something.

[Ms. Toad]

70. Prety darn close to what this kid did...

stuck the water bottle inside his pants and peed into it without anyone being aware what was going on until later when the bottle somehow fell and it was discovered.

[backscatter712]

39. Two possibilities...

One, the kid genuinely had a bathroom emergency, in which case the school and the teacher was grossly in the wrong for forcing him to use the bottle or pee himself.

Two, if we accept the petty authoritarians posting in this threat that the kids were going to great lengths to get out of class, the school was so fucking miserable that the kids were resorting to these lengths to escape, which makes me wonder what the fuck is so horrible about that school, that classroom and that teacher that they were taking such measures.

Either way, I'm not blaming the kid.

[LeftyMom]

40. Whole lot of authoritarians on this thread.

If you treat young people like they can't even be trusted to use the bathroom, you'll wind up with young people who can't even be trusted to use the bathroom.

[backscatter712]

41. Damned fucking straight! n/t

[Lance_Boyle]

42. Whole lot of defensive BAD TEACHERS on this thread.

Yes, indeed.

[proud2BlibKansan]

45. Whole lot of folks who need to spend time in restrooms

after they've been vandalized by unsupervised kids.

[Arkana]

50. So let me get this straight.

Your position is that teachers should be allowed to tell students to piss themselves rather than go to the goddamn restroom because of the chance that they MIGHT vandalize them while in there?

[proud2BlibKansan]

54. No. My position is that there is a good reason schools don't allow kids to use the restroom

unsupervised.

[NYC_SKP]

63. This sounds like a classroom "Power Issue"... Happens daily. I would dump that "teacher".

Unless I'm missing something, this is weak-skilled wrong-career "teacher" exercising their power trip on a kid.

I see it all the time, though less often as I'm in a better educational environment and won't abide by that shit.

I'll do everything I can to see that such teachers "find a more appropriate place" to work, based on their skill sets and all.

For their own good, really.

I only hire teachers who understand that we serve students.

I serve teachers so that the can serve students well, teachers serve students.

It's not fucking rocket science.

[tblue37]

74. I think today's public school teachers are under tremendous stress.

It is certainly possible that it was just a jerk of a teacher power tripping on the kid.

But it is also possible that it was a moment of frustration for a teacher who had been pushed to her limit by a disrupting, manipulative kid in a school environment full of such kids and where the teacher is given little or no support by administrators or parents.

Some school cultures are positive and wholesome for both students and teachers. Some are soul-destroying for both. I would want to know a lot more about the teacher, the kid, and what led up to this incident before assuming the teacher is a complete power-tripping jerk and the student is an innocent, abused little darling.

[Arkana]

44. Teachers who do this should be fired.

I used to have those teachers in school and every time they played games with me or another kid who wanted to take a leak, I wanted to choke them to death with a blackboard eraser.

[vulture socialist]

49. Oh great, another story bashing public schools!

But I have been in school these days and they have pretty Draconian policies about bathroom breaks in some areas. I always wonder what kids are supposed to do if they really have to go. In my day (when the men wore onion belts) we were allowed free reign in the hallways to go potty.

[Arkana]

51. How is it bashing public schools?

Seems like it's attacking tyrant teachers to me.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

55. why didn't she have bathroom passes

she could have issued bathroom passes at the beginning of the year which she could sign. These would be used for emergencies like this. She was lucky that he didn't urinate on her shoes.

[proud2BlibKansan]

57. Perhaps the school didn't allow passes

I've taught in several schools where students were not allowed to use the restroom with a pass. And the restrooms were locked. They were open in between classes and supervised by a teacher or administrator.

[Arkana]

64. Sorry, but that's bordering on creepy.

When you've gotta go, you've gotta go, regardless of whether it's in the middle of class or not.

[proud2BlibKansan]

66. Do you have rules where you work?

I would imagine you do. One of the rules where I work is to NEVER let a student use the restroom during class. And some in this thread are calling me an authoritarian - for choosing to follow the rule.

Yes I think it's a silly rule but I do understand the reason for it and have tried to explain that here. I also have much larger issues to deal with as a teacher. And I can report that in more than 30 years I've never had a child wet themselves because I chose to follow the rule and not let them go to the restroom every time they asked.

[tblue37]

73. Kids often use the claim that they need to pee as a way to get out of class and play around in

the hallway or restroom. The teacher must be in the classroom supervising and keeping as many as 20 to 50 kids under control and actually trying to teach them something, so she can't be following the sneaky kids out into the hallway or the restroom to make sure they aren't just fritzing around.

If she leaves her classroom unattended to go looking for the kid who left the room several minutes ago and something happens in the room while she is gone, she is in big trouble. But if she lets the kid go out there and he causes trouble or something untoward happens to him, then she is in big trouble.

There are simply not enough teachers to handle the crowd control problem that teaching has become in a lot of our schools, and the kids are adept at manipulating the system and the teachers. And since the kids often have all sorts of behavioral problems caused by lousy socialization, or emotional/psychological problems caused by family dysfunction, they are not all cooperative little darlings.

Today’s schools are very, very different from what schools were like when we were young—and many of today's kids are also very, very different. Those of us who have been working closely with children of all ages for decades are on the frontlines. We see how different things are now, and how different kids and families are now. Often people who don't have similar experience really have no idea what is going on.

I ran a home daycare for 18 years, raising 37 kids (my 2 and 35 others). I have also taught college English since 1972 (yes, even during my daycare years), and have tutored students of all ages (second grade to graduate school), with and without learning disabilities, in all subjects except for math beyond eighth grade and science beyond tenth grade biology, though I do tutor even college level science classes of certain kinds.

I also taught in our city's elementary schools as a substitute one year (a few years after I had closed the daycare) as a way to supplement my income. I have a lot of background and experience with kids and with students of all ages, and I actually like kids. But they really are less socialized now than kids were in the past, and they are harder to handle in school, especially since parents and administrators do not back up the teacher's authority in the classroom, and kids are expert at knowing just what to say to get the teacher into trouble.

"American Kids Really Have Changed"
http://www.childrensneeds.homestead.com/rudekids.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

75. Thank you. Very well stated.

Kids really ARE different and parents are as well. They are very protective - and that is understandable considering the world is a scarier place than it was when we were kids.

One graphic example we see in elementary school is that kids don't know how to play games at recess. We have to teach them the rules for kickball! They don't know how to share playground equipment or how to take turns. The reason is they just don't play outside like we did when we were kids. Parents keep kids indoors. No not all parents, but a majority. So the only place kids play kickball is at school. The only place they HAVE TO share with their peers in a game or other free play activity is at school.

This is why teachers have to have organized games at recess and they have to participate in the games. And why we have many schools where free play is not allowed at recess.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

67. They ought to give more time between classes

5 minutes is not enough to get from building to building and go to the bathroom.

[proud2BlibKansan]

68. It depends on the campus

At the high school I attended we had only 3 minutes but it was such a small school that was plenty of time.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

69. I also find it difficult

Our buildings are far apart as the school is huge.

[MrCoffee]

56. I spent K-12 in Klein ISD

I got $20 it was my 7th grade math teacher. What a jerkface!