Math teacher only allows students 1 bathroom pass per week, gives them extra credit if they don't use the restroom at all: 'Both the rule and the reward are problematic'

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Sep 8, 2024 8:00 PM EDT

When you're a teenager, you don't always have control over whether you can go to the restroom when needed. Both my minimum wage service job and my high school teachers made me ask permission to use the restroom, and if they said no, then I couldn't go! I had a friend who peed on the floor of her Chemistry class in defiance of a teacher who told her she couldn't use the restroom twice in a row. I wish I could've been as anti-establishment, cool, and gross as her, but I took a different route. I memorized the bathroom policies of all 6-8 of my teachers; somehow, they were never the same in any class. I don't know how six people can devise six completely different ways for a teenager to ask to pee, but somehow, my teachers found a way. Luckily, my teachers never rewarded not peeing, like the teacher at the center of this story.