On a Need To Go Basis

I loved this, it's an article by Anthony Cody. You have to read it. It's one of those times we glimpse behind the veil.  An Admin writes the New Year Bathroom resolutions for their school.
No one is going easily it seems in Chi-town.
(You have to love anyone functioning at the anal retentive level to link your going to the restroom to your test score practicing on Common Core)

Chicago School Rations Bathroom Visits to Help Prepare for Common Core Tests

In my District if I copied and posted or forwarded a memo sent out- I'd be in serious trouble. We cannot do that. So I do think of this as an action that could bring a teacher consequences.
Is this a moment to invoke Thoreau, or not?
Perhaps.

Later I found my comment noticed here in an article I truly enjoyed.

Trickle-Down Administration: Education Reform in a Culture of Distracting Outrage

It seems to me that who gets to pee is as good a divide as we get.

When my husband went into admin, we were both teachers for ten years at that point, I envied his gaining the unbelievable right to go"whenever he damn well wanted" to quote him as I tried out the facilities by his office. And that access to a bathroom not sitting with dirt blowing through open air glassless windows, with heat and nice paper, with a scented candle and pictures on the wall said a lot to me.
Life in CA schools in poverty often placed my bottom out in the cold, literally, and waiting for hours for that-quite difficult when I realized pregnancy brought a need to go, and I could not with recess duty, class and students often get to a toilet. Also a harder realization, the low quality paper gave me infections. It took me 9 YEARS to make the connection. Those are the bottom lines. Many teachers will share with you what happened to their health long term for lack of going as needed.

We once called this "the hidden curriculum," or a part of it, and I studied it in my graduate program at Chapman College where I wrote about things like this when I took the tests all day to gain my Master's. One particularly long piece was my sharing the hidden curriculum as I knew it. Writing that I knew I would "pass" my comps. Strange to say, but true, because I was both observant and willing to talk about it. The hidden curriculum exists largely because we cannot, will not and don't-speak of these things. Bathrooms in south Central LA schools as well as soap in them underscored what I thought we most wanted the kids to know. Your right to be clean-is not on our radar (the William's lawsuit summed that all up nicely). And ever since those that do not allow students to wash hands before eating has defined my first take on who they are as instructors. It isn't so hidden if you are willing to look.

Going to the restroom is regulated and unregulated according to hierarchy most of the time in public school.
If you are a girl with a period-enjoy high school because NOW YOU KNOW. I do in fact say that from personal experience.

I visited Pacifica HS once when my daughter was late coming from her class to the car. I picked her up after school, but she was very involved in her journalism. Pacifica is in Oxnard and both my daughter's were Valedictorians there. I had to go, sadly, so I got out to find the restroom. It is very rare for me to venture on a campus, but it was one of those moments-I didn't want to miss her by running down the street to the Pizza place. After finding them locked, several restrooms, I was directed by a student to a bathroom with a few stalls open for after school needs in a part of the school rather far from where my car was. It was open to the outside, had no paper, no soap, no stall doors, no seat covers and was completely UNLIKE the one inside the admin spaces that I was to see (months later) under a different situation. Perhaps it has improved. Perhaps they got a few rolls of TP. Or a trash can. Thank gosh for a toilet.

Perhaps.

When I was young I had a terror of "wasting class time" so built into my psyche from teachers and admins. that no matter the situation I would not use the school restrooms. I had been caught once in a restroom in junior high where I was sent to "find" a student by another teacher, not listened to as to why I was there,  and lambasted and threatened with suspension because the instructor smelled smoke-everyone in that room was written up and "demerited"-and the instructor that sent me did nothing to stop my being included. So I feared.
I once, suffering a severe gastro flu, in high school at Morgantown High school in WV wrote a note excusing  me from the school for an ortho appointment-a lie which I regretted-took a mile walk and two buses to get to my home, having also been denied the bathroom key by the Morgantown Public Library queen-bee who stated that she'd "had enough" of high school students like me asking for it. After two hours and soiled clothes I was home with the indelible truth fixed in my head.
And, no, I don't want to do this to someone else.
Who holds the keys to YOUR restroom experience holds the power in your relating.
I assure you.

When I was in Greenfield CA teaching, over 20 years ago now, I read in the Salinas papers a case brought against Nestle by a group of workers over the right to use the restroom. Cannot find it on-line for some reason.  Apparently chocolate workers have no such bathroom rights either. Following this horror story I identified with the workers. I had toxic shock on one occasion teaching for failure to change tampons. I knew work in my school for me prevented self care. Duty on a recess yard twice that day precluded a break-I really could not go. Oh well-how can I dare assert the school had anything to do with it? Am I a doctor? Am I accurate or more than an anecdote.
So these women suing Nestle caught my eye.

Good workers go only when allowed, no hand washing as I recall.

When you do, indeed, decide to examine the Hidden Curriculum in a systematic, transparent, career and school ready mode allow me to suggest some lines of thought.

Who can get a drink in public school and under what terms?

Are soap, TP, clean stalls, privacy, security a part of the regular experience? Is there ever hot water?Is that different in poverty schools?

Timing yourself for a month of your restroom experiences what was the average time on the toilet and in hand care after? What amount of time is allotted an average student and under what terms? At a recess exactly how many students are expected to use that toileting facility in what amount of time, over two hundred, in say ten minutes?

How do students that are female get consideration for menstruation needs in schools in regards to time and access to facilities, must they state they are needing it for this, is a doctor "note" required?

Can students stretch their legs? Under what terms? Is sitting 6 hours a healthful exercise?

Comparing admin bathroom access/leg stretch/Starbucks run to teacher to student access and facility, what is noticed?

What regulates, inspects and supports healthy practice in restrooming? Do we actually inspect this?

Shall we move on to look at student food, employee lunchhours, duty, comfort of student furniture, ergonomics, shade, sun exposure, allergens, mouldy ten year old poor carpet holding every germ in the world, exposure to asthma causing conditions?

In my room is a carpet that is so old and so full of mold I cannot imagine gross that severe.
It doesn't sit in the admin headquarters I assure you.

At some point it will occur to the reader that my practical, hands-on experience of public school calls into question our compassion, empathy, power, use of $, our ability to transmit the "way things are" to students-all the stuff of hierarchy, cultures, and all amazingly about how we treat our children.
Our kids who will grow to be us.
Here I refer you to something written as I faced a surgery in large part caused by my being forced to move my classroom when I had a bad back. I'd lost the ability to walk from it and had to then have surgery.

So here is a memo written by an anonymous leader, printed by Anthony Cody. A school he later tells us faces closure. Perhaps they have lost a compassion because of the way they are being treated.

What are we then going to do with the knowledge that schools often are poor facilities, at least in CA, and that how we "manage" students often strips them of human feeling, in the name of our getting them to do what we want. School is compulsory.
That is a basic fact often overlooked I think.

How exactly are we to manage that relationship?

Perhaps a letter into someone's "file." A demerit. Perhaps looking harder at what we do as if we were in the shoes of the most vulnerable.