The is nothing more sacred to a teacher than the opportunity to use the restroom. We hold it dear and do not want anything disturbing our routines. When I got to Rangeview I was in my early 40s and was one of the younger people in our area. Whenever I would go to the restroom or talk with some of the older male teachers, they said things about Club 50. I spent several months not knowing what they meant until one day when I breached protocol. I was in the restroom and one of the Social Studies teachers comes in to use the restroom and it was already filled. Someone from my department was in the restroom and the Social Studies teacher turned to Rob and told him to school the young kid. I didn’t realize I was the young kid until we got back into our office. It seemed good-natured but I do believe there was a kernel of truth to what was said. Rob shared with me a couple of things. First, the class periods at the time were 50 minutes long. Second, teachers over 50 had preferential seating. I kind of chuckled but I did hold that information in my head and didn’t breach protocol again. Then the day hit when I was getting a little older and I realized how important the rules of club 50 were. As teachers, we built and trained 50-minute bladders. When we moved to longer class periods it was a little inconvenient but we could do it. We did have a few years of block scheduling with 90 minutes. That was a real challenge but we all survived. I am now passing Club 50 on to the next generation.
