Arbitrary Classroom Rules
“You are a teacher, you harrass people over who can go pee pee depending on your mood" ~a stranger on Twitter
There’s a memory from third grade that I think about a lot. My teacher yelled at a student for many minutes straight because he took too long in the bathroom. “Do you know how long it takes me to use the bathroom? 45 seconds. Do you know how long it took you? FIVE MINUTES.” I remember thinking at the time, “you only take 45 seconds to poop?”
I wonder, do some teachers use classroom management as an outlet for their own anger? If so, I can’t blame them. Teaching is hard. It’s frustrating. It’s thankless. Now that I’m a teacher, I suspect my third grade teacher didn’t yell at that kid because he used the bathroom for five minutes. She yelled at him because she was having a bad day.
Why do we have so many rules in the classroom? Is it always to encourage learning, or is it sometimes to impose control? Earlier in the school year, an admin told me to only allow kids to eat during breaks and lunch. I implemented these rules for a few days. Then I asked myself “does this improve their learning experience?” The answer was no. The kids can eat during class now.
A stranger tweeted at me the other day. “You are a teacher, you harrass people over who can go pee pee depending on your mood, while making less than the dude who slept in class and welds for a living. Lol”
I clicked on their profile and noticed they tweeted similar things to other teachers. It made me think of that kid in my third grade class. I wonder how he is doing now.
