Hall Pass Chronicles

We've all been students, so the idea of using a hall pass is not foreign to us. Sometimes we forget to grab it before we leave the room, sometimes our teacher may forget to remind us to take it. But in a well run school, there will be a hall monitor ensuring that a hall pass is in hand. That hall monitor will turn the student around to get that official permission to be out of class.

Let me tell you about the time I unknowingly locked two students in the restroom while I was on hallway duty!

Disclaimer:: no students were harmed and their "lock up" was all a part of THEIR plan!

It was a typical morning. We were about fifteen minutes into instruction, so I decided to check the restrooms on the hall with a priority grade level. I went into the girls restroom to check that no one was fixing their edges or applying more lip gloss, or simply socializing. My monitoring of the boys' restroom looked a little different. I opened the door, went as far as respectfully appropriate and called out for students. Several young men scattered and went to class. I did a last call and I didn't see or hear any students. So I locked the bathroom door.

For context, we had times during instruction when the bathrooms were off limits and we didn't have the staff to have an all day hall monitor at each hall. We focused on morning arrival, afternoon dismissal, and classroom transitions.

Well, about an hour later, the facilities manager informs me that there were two young men in the restroom when he went in to clean. They had been locked in. The students missed the whole class period-not because they were otherwise indisposed, but because they were hiding and once locked in they had their breakfast- vape pens.

Teachers had marked them absent because they had never reported to homeroom. We had to update our attendance records and call families and inform them that their children used their talents for evil and not good. Moving forward, I had to rely on a male staff member to check the boys' restroom on each floor because it was obvious that students knew where and how to evade my restroom check before first period.

What random, totally innocent, thing have you done as a teacher or leader? Chime in and share your story!