We might as well get the bathroom pass discussion going here, since we are in the middle of the seating chart discussion right now as well:
What I personally do is allow two 3 min. trips per class without asking. They just get up and go. When I explain that policy in the first few days of the year I tell the kids that, according to research (I make this up), in a typical 50 min. class 1.3 kids will need to use the bathroom for real. So I give them two such passes.
When those two have gone, nobody else can go without asking permission, and even then it has to be an emergency. It kind of works. The best thing about this policy, which I haven’t replaced because I haven’t come up with anything better or more effective, is that when a kid who is a hall-wanderer gets up to use one of those first two passes, the class knows it and calls him out on it.
I must point out that my students are not typical kids. They are used to running teachers into the ground. Like I say, the above kind of works. The only real way to keep bathroom trips down, unless I hear something better below, is to offer a good class and to make a note of any blatant repeated or overly lengthy trips by one person and make the phone call to the parent on that.
Another important part of my bathroom policy is that nobody can go during the first ten or last ten minutes of class. In our high school, it is a safe bet to say that at least 1 out of every 5 students, conservatively, uses the passing period to socialize and then asks to go to the bathroom as soon as the class is supposed to start. This is an important policy that really does work to help keep the peace.
Last year I had a kid whose very involved and cool mom asked me to have him call her each time he wanted to use the bathroom in my class. So if he asked, I had his mom’s # on speed dial and just grabbed my phone and dialed it and told him to go into the hallway and ask her.
It worked, but in general I am not good at devising plans that work magically to keep kids in line – having a bunch of complex systems about that and other issues is just not for me.
I look forward to reading any bathroom policy comments that might be offered below.