Candy Sydney-Browning teaches seven- and eight-year-old children at a public school in Fulton County, near Atlanta. One day, one of her students asked where the “gas station” would be in the new classroom. She understood the joke before anyone else.
That is how the fart corner was born, a small designated space marked by a yellow sign and aerosol air fresheners, where the kids can stand for a moment when they need to, without asking permission or interrupting class. “I don’t have to say ‘yes, you can go.’ They simply get up, go, and I keep teaching”, the teacher said in a TikTok video that has already racked up 4,7 million views.
For her, it isn’t just a classroom joke: it’s about teaching them to look after their privacy and mature without feeling embarrassed in front of their classmates. Parents and teachers were divided between tenderness and doubts about the smell, but no one disputes that someone first taught those seven-year-old children to respect themselves.