A teacher in Georgia created a “gas station” in her classroom — a designated fart corner where students can go to pass gas.
Candy Sydney-Browning, a 36-year-old second-grade teacher in Atlanta, named the corner the “gas station,” and calls the designated toot spot the “gusty winds area.” She keeps air freshener sprays nearby, TODAY reported.
According to Sydney-Browning, the fart corner is a success.
“I have a very weak stomach, so I cannot take it,” she told the outlet. “And so I was like, ‘OK, I’m just gonna create this little area over here, and you just get up, you go over there, do your business, come back, and that’s just it.’”
Sydney Browning said the point of the fart corner is to de-stigmatize a normal bodily function and to keep students from wasting class time.
Her “gas station” has gone viral online after she posted a video to TikTok showing the fart corner and explaining how it works. In the video, she walks through her classroom and shows where the corner is marked by a yellow sign.
“While I’m teaching, no one has to ask,” she said in the video. “I don’t have to stop teaching in order to say yes. You can go.”
“The student inside the classroom, they don’t lose any instruction,” she said. “They can continue to learn. It’s a win-win situation.”
@chokola___ Replying to @Britt I present to you, my classroom gas station.
Sydney-Browning said she had her first student, who had a “very troubled stomach,” use the station last year. She said that while some classmates turned around and smiled, no one pointed fingers or made fun of him.
“It just became a norm,” she told the outlet.
She said students have largely stopped reacting to the corner.
“Sometimes I even forget that I have it,” she said.
However, the debate is very much alive on TikTok, where thousands of commenters either embraced or rejected the idea.
“I teach middle school and we have a fart closet,” one commenter wrote.
“This is genius and normalizing body functions without disturbing the classroom amazing,” another user wrote.
Others seemed perplexed and horrified by the idea.
“And the rest of the class stays focused while somebody is farting in the corner???” a commenter wrote.
“I’d be so embarrassed with the whole class knowing I’m getting up to go fart,” another person opined.
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