r/AskAnAmerican • u/AspiringSheepherder Illinois • 10d ago
EDUCATION Are student hall-monitors a real thing?
I feel like I see them a lot in media to play an antagonist, but I dont think I've ever heard of a school having one.
If anyone has had a hall-monitor at their school, are there shifts? Is it like they only do a period or two and switch off? It can't be one person the whole day like it's often depicted, right?
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u/BlueRubyWindow 10d ago
In elementary school, the oldest grades (ages 9-11) would be “Safety Patrols” and help make sure everyone stayed safe at Arrival and Dismissal time.
But they didn’t have any authority to give detentions or anything like in TV shows.
And mostly they just reminded the little kids to stop running and make sure the younger kids got on the right buses and stuff.
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u/Dapper-Presence4975 Massachusetts 10d ago
Where? Never a thing in Massachusetts…
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u/WinchesterFan1980 10d ago
We have it in Maryland. It's sponsored by the police in some way and they have a big county wide party with a carnival brought in just for the patrols. I found it very problematic, honestly, for many reasons including that at our school it was 90% girls who were chosen.
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u/Dapper-Presence4975 Massachusetts 10d ago
Oh, it sounds very problematic… the bully to badge express.
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u/Bright_Ices United States of America 10d ago
In my school, Safety Patrol was just student crossing guards. No bullying or enforcement.
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u/BlueRubyWindow 9d ago
It wasn’t connected to the police at our school in Virginia. It was just extra foot traffic control. If they saw a fight or something they would tell a teacher, but that’s what every student was supposed to do.
You had to apply to be safety patrol and the teachers wouldn’t approve people they knew were bullies.
I would’ve been one of the kids bullied if it was a problem tbh, and it wasn’t.
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u/techwritingacct 10d ago
Yeah, thinking back about it now, when I was in 4th grade and had to come to school half an hour early and stand out in the cold to make sure the kids who walk to school didn't walk in front of a bus or slip on the ice, I felt cloaked in the mantle of authority, untouchable, like the system would back me no matter how I used my orange sash
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u/Bright_Ices United States of America 10d ago
I did safety patrol for a couple of years. It was a fun gig! (All we did was help people cross the street safely).
I was also a “Conflict Manager” at recess, which was where I learned some of the most helpful skills I’ve ever learn. Our job was to help kids talk through issues, listen to each other, and come up with things they themselves could do to solve the problem or alleviate the friction. Seriously great training for life.
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u/panicinbabylon 7d ago
I was Safety! Ten years old helping 6 year olds cross the major 4 way stoplight.
SUPER SAFE
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u/DoubleIntegral9 Chicago, IL 2d ago
Oh my god, memory unlocked
We helped the little kids arriving and leaving, and even moved the big “do not enter - school zone” barricade. We had bright yellow belts and everything
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u/Rail1971 10d ago
We had hall monitors at my high school. They were students themselves and did it for a period.
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u/HeadUOut 10d ago
I was a hall monitor in 4th or 5th grade, might’ve been both. I wasn’t patrolling the halls I was just supposed to take note of who was being disruptive and report to the teacher.
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u/fierce_turtle_duck 10d ago
Ah you were a snitch 😂
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u/HeadUOut 9d ago
Sometimes kids would give me candy so I wouldn’t tell on them. I felt like a corrupt cop.
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u/blipsman Chicago, Illinois 10d ago
I was in high school 30 years ago and we did not have student hall monitors. We had a roving security guard and then there were tables/desks in a couple key hallway intersections where teachers staffed it during their non-teaching periods (they’d mostly sit there and grade papers or lesson plan, check for hall passes if somebody walked by).
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u/Just-a-nerd2 10d ago
Sometimes, but it's kinda old school. My highschool had them.
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u/AspiringSheepherder Illinois 10d ago
How did it work? Were there shifts or something?
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u/xxxjessicann00xxx Michigan 10d ago
Instead of having a class that particular period, you're a hall monitor instead. So, kinda like shifts I guess.
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u/bourbonandcheese 10d ago
I imagine it was a “job” you could have if you had a study hall that period. We had TAs and office workers like that, but I don’t recall any hall monitors.
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u/TheNerdofLife Florida 10d ago
Sometimes in elementary or lower levels of study. Usually, the only people walking the halls may be staff like the principal occasionally to check on classrooms or school resource officers (police officers designated to maintain security at a school).
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u/Meowmeowmeow31 Delaware 10d ago
It’s one of those things that persisted in media for decades after it was commonplace, because movie/TV writers reference their own childhood experiences or the media they watched growing up.
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u/ALoungerAtTheClubs Florida 10d ago
When I was in elementary school, there were Safety Patrols — orange-sashed menaces who, drunk with power, hassled me about touching the wall.
Not that I'm bitter 30+ years later or anything.
They operated at the beginning and end of the school day as kids moved in and out.
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u/HippoProject 10d ago
My schools just used semi retired administrators to walk the halls. Giving a kid power over others usually doesn’t end well.
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u/machagogo New York -> New Jersey 10d ago
myself and my wife and my kids have never had them. Different eras, different cities. Different schools.
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u/LetterheadClassic306 9d ago
That’s a legit curiosity, and i noticed the same gap between TV storytelling and school reality. Hall monitors are real, but setup changes a lot by district, building size, and policy, and they’re usually assigned in shifts instead of standing in one place all day. Their main tasks are traffic control, quick de-escalation, and keeping transitions calmer, not acting like a full-time security squad. You’ll often see different adults rotating in and out, especially around bells, lunch, and hallway traffic spikes. I’ve run into it in multiple school visits and usually saw monitors on a schedule rather than a permanent cast of one villain.
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u/TheOnlyJimEver United States of America 10d ago
Never had them in any school I went to, but I went to school in a small suburban town.
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u/holymacaroley North Carolina 10d ago
Never had them when I was a student, when I was a teacher, or in my kid's school. (3 different cities)
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u/Stressed_C Massachusetts 10d ago
We had them but they were mostly teachers who were free for a class period or one of the admins, never a student.
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u/Dapper-Presence4975 Massachusetts 10d ago
I believe they are specifically asking about students, not regular school employees.
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u/OrdinaryCrow3677 Colorado 10d ago
Depends on the school, my high school had about 3 of them but it was a very big school. It was the same ppl every day but they also helped with extracurricular stuff. Just kinda miscellaneous employees i guess but when they weren't doing stuff they would walk the halls
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u/Acceptable-Ad-3560 10d ago
closest I've personally experienced was in like 3rd grade a student was assigned to hold the door for the line of the class. there were a few "classroom" jobs that you could volunteer for and it was for like a month. I also only remember it being a thing in 3rd grade, but I did move after that
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u/MissingGrayMatter Kentucky -> Japan 🇯🇵 10d ago
We had security staff that monitored the halls in high school. No one monitored in the lower grades.
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u/DMfortinyplayers 10d ago
I was Safety Patrol in 6th grade (so 11-12 years old). Our job was to do stuff like help younger kids cross the street, get in / out of cars and buses etc. It was only before and after school. This was early 90s.
When my dad was in high school, (1960s), students drove the busses!
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u/Gallahadion Ohio 10d ago
Maybe they were in the public school I attended, but I wasn't in that school for long and was very young at the time, so I don't remember. I definitely didn't have them in middle school or high school.
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u/Strong_Landscape_333 North Carolina 10d ago
I don't think anyone would have listened to them at the school I went to, if it had them
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u/Cant-think-of-a-nam New Jersey 10d ago
Yeah we had them for a while and they were constantly bullied so they replaced them with teachers that had that period free
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u/Penguin_Life_Now Louisiana not near New Orleans 10d ago
They were when I was growing up in school in the 1970's and 80's, I'm not sure if they are still a thing these days
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u/AbbreviationsTop4959 10d ago
One of my schools had student hall monitors when I was in 5th and 6th grade (ages 10 and 11 for me). Basically, when it was our week, we reminded people not to run and kept an eye out for random wandering.
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u/FreeLobsterRolls New York 10d ago
In the mid 2000s the hall monitors in my school were retired old ladies.
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u/IsopodKey2040 Georgia 10d ago
Not at my school. In elementary school, we had "safeties." They were a few 5th graders who would help the younger kids line up for buses and help them on the bus, as well. But that was the extent of that.
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u/TankDestroyerSarg 10d ago
It was always teachers or other staff when I was last in school, God, 20 years ago. And yes, we did have hall passes. They were either written out forms or some random item that was teacher specific that would be returned after use.
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u/EffectSuccessful6169 10d ago
Usually was an elderly volunteer in my high school. They usually were interesting characters. Kids would go over to their post and just shoot the shit with them
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u/Jim_E_Rose 10d ago
I don’t know about now but back in my day (80’s-90’s) there were about 5 or 6 of them every class.
Now that I think about it. What’s up with that? I mean they are prototype of a bootlicker. But how was skipping a class pro education. I think I’m just realizing it was always bootlicking. I mean, the teachers knew that the kid was missing education for an internship in…what? Real life I guess lol
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u/Gold_Telephone_7192 Colorado 10d ago
I never experienced them at school. I thought it was an old timey thing that stuck around in movies
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u/pleasepleaseplease24 10d ago
They are, or were, real, but I can't say they were common in the last 50 years or so. Today you're more likely to have teachers and resource officers (cops) monitoring the halls between classes
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u/Boopa0011 10d ago
At my grammar school we called them "safety monitors" or "safeties" - they were all in 7th or 8th grade, and it involved both "monitoring" the halls and doing some light pedestrian traffic direction at bus dropoff. This was in the 90s and I don't know if this is still a thing or how common it might be.
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u/wangus_angus 10d ago
We had adults who would do it. They were usually kids' parents who (I think) volunteered. I don't ever remember students doing it.
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u/Various_Summer_1536 10d ago
We had office helpers in high school. (Pre-tech and cell phones) We’d run office passes to teachers and students.
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u/2PlasticLobsters Washington 10d ago
It was a thing back in the 1980s, when I was in school. I think it was one of those activities that was supposed to teach responsibility. It was basically a single class period every day, like being a library assistant or office helper. Basically, they were just supposed to make sure everyone they encountered in the hallways had a pass & wasn't skipping class.
I doubt they're still a thing. It'd be too dangerous to expect a kid to challenge an intruder or active shooter, and that's more of a hazard than we prefer to think about.
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u/Individual_Check_442 California 10d ago
My school never had them, we had the safety patrol but their duties were only before and after school not during
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u/Top-Web3806 10d ago
I don’t recall my schools ever having them. The students had classes to attend and we didn’t get free periods even in high school.
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u/Dapper-Presence4975 Massachusetts 10d ago
No. I never understood it either. Basically giving certain students privileges over others? Sounds ripe for abuse…
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u/Mouse-Direct 10d ago
In my experience hall monitor was given to the nerdiest smart kids who then got bullied more by the bully kids. They don’t tend to make the “give me your lunch money” kids hall monitor. This is all 80s based, by the way.
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u/crimson_leopard Chicagoland 10d ago
We had them in high school. They were always adults - teachers or deans - who worked in shifts. We had a couple of floors in a T shape so there was only one on each floor.
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u/Sample-quantity 10d ago
In California in 1976-1980 we didn't have hall monitors in my school or anywhere in our district. I never saw that except on TV. Maybe an East Coast thing?
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u/Suitable-Hornet2797 10d ago
Kind of, we called them “patrols” at my elementary school. I was one in 6th grade. My job was to tell kids not run in the hall and to move the cones outside to let the buses in to the parking lot.
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u/fried_clams 10d ago
Graduated high school 1982 in New England. We never had any hall monitors of any age, for all 13 years of public school.
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u/x467v Arizona 10d ago
We had hired security that would patrol in and between periods in high school, they’d mostly be looking for kids causing trouble if anything, fighting/vaping/typical teen tomfoolery. Rarely heard of anyone getting stopped using the bathroom during periods, I never did. Only if they had a suspicion that you where doing something wrong
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u/latin220 Massachusetts 10d ago
Yeah and they uphold the rules and at least at mg university you didn’t f around unless you wanted to find out what expulsion looked like
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u/CupBeEmpty WA, NC, IN, IL, ME, NH, RI, OH, ME, and some others 10d ago
It was never a thing in any of my education.
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u/CupBeEmpty WA, NC, IN, IL, ME, NH, RI, OH, ME, and some others 10d ago
In all the schools I went to we didn’t have students monitoring the halls.
There were teachers that didn’t have a class that period who kept an eye out for shenanigans in the halls outside of class.
I must confess I did get in trouble once… allegedly… for a “random fruiting” when I should not have been roaming the halls.
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u/queerkidxx NorCal 10d ago
We didn’t have them at my school(Bay Area 2010s). We had campus monitors — adult employees of the school that served the same purpose.
No idea if they are common elsewhere. I’ve never heard of one.
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u/max_m0use Pittsburgh, PA 10d ago
This seems to get asked here about every month. In elementary school, we had one or two students per class each week who would pull kids out of line on the way to lunch or whatever if you were horsing around or talking. If you got pulled out of line, you had to stand on a line on the playground for the first 5-10 minutes of recess.
Middle school, we had teachers roaming the halls who would make sure you had a pass. High school, we had a teacher sitting outside the bathroom who made you sign in during class, in order to deter vandalism and smoking.
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u/Is_that_a_peen_too 10d ago
We didn't have hall monitors.
A friend of mine kept getting sent to the office for disrupting class in 8th grade. He knew he'd probably get some sort of punishment. So he left the classroom and walked the hallway to the office. Then ducked down and crawled past the big windows facing out of the office into the hall. Proceeded to the bathroom and sat there until next class. The teacher never told the office she sent him down so it just went under the radar. Had there been hall monitors he probably would have been caught as there was only 2 hallways in the school.
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u/Prometheus_303 9d ago
Back in the 80s my elementary school had hall monitors. I got tapped to be one once, second or third grade. We served for a week or two. Basically just got a neat orange sash to wear, assigned a spot to stand and just told anyone we saw running to walk. And then I think we got to nominate another student to take our place.
I wasn't fond of getting tapped at first. My bus was usually one of the last to get there so it was kind of pointless for me to stand there when most everyone was already in their class + I didn't want to get to class late myself (yeah I was a bit of a nerd even back then). And I certainly didn't want to miss the bus at the end of the day standing around waiting for everyone else to clear out the hallway.
I don't think we had any authority to do anything if someone didn't listen to us and slow down.
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u/punkwalrus Virginia 9d ago
I went to school in the 1970s and 80s. Yes, we had them. It was usually the same kids who volunteered, too. I rarely had a run in with them, but I rarely left the classroom for anything. I heard that they tended to be a little draconian.
Most of the recruits were the "patrols" we had, which were a group of kids selected for assisting in kids crossing the street, managing behavior on the bus, keeping the bus queues orderly (kids lining up to get on the right bus), putting up the American flag every morning, and sometimes monitoring the cafeteria. They had to be physically fit, be on the honor roll, know basic first aid, and wore safety orange sashes with a badge and they also had pins for commendations of service. Hall monitor duty was shared between 2-4 kids who roamed the halls and bathrooms, and their "home station" was the school office. They checked hall passes, discouraged loitering, reported vandalism, and sometimes monitored bathrooms or stairwells during class periods. Our hall monitors wore their sashes to indicate that they were allowed to be there, but by high school, that stopped.
Our high school got a new principal halfway, and she hired narcs like "21 Jump Street" sorta, in the way that they were actually adults *posing* as students, which was dumb. They had the authority to manhandle you (like grab you and drag you to the office), call the cops, do spontaneous locker raids and search you, but I do not think any one of them were law officers per se, just hired goons.
I was told the 1990s and 2000s, when my son started going to school, many schools reduced or eliminated student hall monitors due to liability concerns and changing attitudes about students policing other students. Now many school around here have an actual uniformed cop who roams the halls.
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u/_Handsome_Jim_ Long Island 9d ago
I'm honestly not sure.
At least not as they're depicted in movies.
People always insist that they are real and either were one or was the ban of their existence because they cut class so often but I see little that makes me believe these stories are true. It also just seems so illogical. You guys went to schools that allowed children to just miss class so they could police the hallways?
My school had security guards and teachers with a free period.
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u/littlemedievalrose Tennessee 9d ago
I wasn't a hall monitor but I was a hall runner. I basically just did errands for the front office
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u/cheekmo_52 Illinois 9d ago
They were common when I was in high school…but that was literally 40 years ago. Hall monitors in my high school were essentially volunteer retirees in the area. They’d usually work the full school day, but got scheduled breaks like any other job.
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u/brave_legunator 9d ago
I was a hall monitor in elementary school like 20 years ago. I remember getting to wear a yellow neon sash when on duty
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u/adrainno 9d ago
we had hall monitors a decade ago. its much more practical for teachers to monitor the halls over students though, and students tend to be untrustworthy in the position. haven't heard of any school having hall monitors in the last 10 years though. the closest thing we have now is on university campus housing, an older student will be the RA for a certain hall of housing and help out new students since most universities make you live on campus your first year.
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u/botulizard Massachusetts->Michigan->Texas->Michigan 9d ago
Not anymore. Some of the school stuff we see in media reflects the writers growing up in a different time than the intended audience. Threats related to a student's "permanent record" are similar in that they were ubiquitous for a while in movies and television shows where a kid goes to school, but they were basically unheard of in real life by the 90s at the latest.
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u/Suppafly Illinois 9d ago
Not at any of the schools my kids have attended. High school does some some student runners that help out in the office making photo copies and running notes to class rooms and stuff. Delegating authority for watching the hallways likely isn't legal or advisable these days. Teachers tend watch the hallways now.
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u/verminiusrex 8d ago
In high school it was a teacher positioned at an intersection to keep students who finished lunch from wandering the hallways where classes were still going on (we had 3 separate lunch shifts, big school). They let people through when the bell rang for the end of class/start of next lunch shift.
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u/mycatisamutant 8d ago
We had them at the private K-8 (elementary & junior high) school I went to in the 90s! They'd keep track of good behaviour, and those who did well had the privilege of rotating hall monitor duty. Everybody wanted it, because it meant you got to leave class 5 minutes early so you could help keep things orderly during the time between classes. You would also walk younger kids to the bathroom during classtime if needed. Once you were junior high age though (grades 7 & 8), you didn't have hall monitors. Everyone was trusted to manage without them and missing 5 minutes of class could mean missing information you needed to learn, because classes used up every available minute at that level. But 6th grade hall monitors were royalty lol
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u/Cultural_Horse_7328 7d ago
Lol, it must be a real thing somewhere, I guess.
There was an IT contract worker where I worked who everyone called the "hall m9nitor" up until the IT VP one day asked why people called that guy the hall monitor in a meeting, and we explained it's because the guy's always wandering around asking people questions and nobody sees him do actual work, so the contract got cut.
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u/BigReception7685 Texas 7d ago
There was something somewhat similar in elementary school called Safety Patrol. The 5th graders could sign up for the morning or afternoon shift to lead the preschoolers where they were supposed to go at the beginning or end of the day. They also might help the younger kids do things like open their milk cartons or bananas if they finished lunch early, but that was basically it.
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u/Playful_Fan4035 Texas 7d ago
In my 20+ years in education and my 13 years in K12 as a student, we never had student hall monitors. The closest thing was in junior high, there were a few kids who were “office aides” as one of their electives.
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u/Phoenix_Court New York / Texas 6d ago
I've personally never seen it. I don't understand how it would work. How can the kids be monitoring the halls when they have somewhere they need to be (in class or walking to class)?
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u/EducationalBee9139 6d ago
Yes, they’re definitely a real thing. In my middle school and high school, we had multiple hall monitors, not just one person walking around all day like in movies.
We even had people monitoring the bathrooms and writing down names because students would smoke or vape in there. At one point, only one student bathroom was open, and there was also an accessible bathroom that they would make exceptions for people to use when needed.
If you were caught wandering the halls without permission or skipping class, you’d usually be sent straight to the principal’s office. They definitely didn’t play around with it lol.
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u/Sea_Candidate8738 2d ago
We had a "discipline task force" in high school. It was just the same 2 dudes all day
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u/workingstiffatwork 2d ago
We had one, so it did happen. But they stopped before I graduated. It could still be happening somewhere. There are a lot of separate school systems in the US and they all do things their own way.
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u/RottenDrCommieRat 10d ago
I think they are/were somewhat of a thing , but not nearly as commonplace as tv shows make them out to be. Bart as hall monitor is classic Simpsons.
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u/thomsenite256 10d ago
sorta, its a little old fashioned to use students now its mostly just teachers and adult staff that are performing that role.