25 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make and How to Avoid Them

100 Classroom Policies and Practices
school has a policy about the number
of students in the hall at one time.
Teachers should be aware of the policy
and comply as long as it is reasonable
to do so.
Experienced teachers can usually
anticipate unforeseen events such as
two students genuinely needing to
use the restroom at the same time
when there is only one hall pass. They
have a plan B such as an emergency
pass or an “act now and explain later”
policy where students leave in an
emergency rather than soil themselves
trying to wait. Understandably, teachers
would be concerned that students
would abuse the latter policy. One
way to minimize abuse would be to
Scenario 13.10
Toilet Tyrant
keep the emergency pass in the
teacher’s desk and allow students to
get it without permission. Students
who wanted to play might be deterred
by having to get the pass out of the
teacher’s desk. A student who truly
needed to use the restroom would
welcome the flexibility in the policy.
Resourceful teachers know that some
abuse may occur but there are other
measures such as bathroom checks
to curtail undesirable activity. Most
importantly, teachers should empa -
thize with the agony children feel
when they are trying to control their
bladders or bowels for a long time. It
is a difficult battle that children frequently
lose.
One semester at Southwest Texas State University I had a biology teacher whose
restroom policy was ridiculous. On the first day of class he let us know that if we left
class to use the bathroom he would flunk us from the course. There were absolutely
no exceptions. He said, “I do not want any documentation of a bladder infection or an
excuse of pregnancy.” One girl spoke out against this nonsense. He proceeded to kick
her out of class. As a freshman in college I was terrified to flunk a class so I never used
the restroom during class.
Tyranny is the offspring of insecurity
and a need for power.
Teachers who establish such a heavyhanded
authoritarian discipline policy
need to control others to feel secure.
Denying others a right that is theirs by
birth, namely, the right to use the
restroom whenever nature calls, provides
the dictator of such a policy
a heightened sense of power. This
teacher’s refusal to accept any excuse
no matter how legitimate or urgent
was his assurance of no possible threat
to his self-constructed autocracy and
his piteous outcry for power. He
blatantly misused grades to enforce
compliance to his absolute rule. Like
many tyrants throughout history, he
used extreme punishment to extinguish
any threat to his tenuous
power. His intent in using extreme
punishment with a student was to
incite terror in the other, the hope
being that the rest of the students in
the class would vicariously experience
the consequences of the student