Hall monitor

In the United States, a hall monitor may be either a student volunteer who is charged with maintaining order in a school's corridors, or an adult paraprofessional staff member who carries out similar duties, sometimes in conjunction with other functions. Students may be selected as hall monitors because they are judged responsible, or they may be appointed by rota.

While specific duties vary between establishments, hall monitors typically check hall passes; maintain overall good conduct in the corridors; and ensure that students are punctual in attending classes. Hall monitors may also be posted to a school's doors in order to prevent unauthorized entry during recess, in which case they may be known as door monitors.

At some schools, a hall monitor may receive extra privileges and authority not afforded to other students.

in Malta a few schools have monitors, mostly door, class and hall monitors. Their job is not to let any one into classes before the lessons start and during recess. Class monitors are like prefects but only stay with the class until the teacher arrives for the first lesson in the morning or right after recess.

In Ontario, Canada, Hall Monitors (if present at all) are not student volunteers, but actual paid security guards who patrol corridors and maintain security within a secondary school. There may be 1-4 hall monitors depending on the size of the secondary school. In India the title is only monitor who has responsibilities for assisting teachers in class.

In South Korea, monitors do not walk around the hall. In the morning, they are all around the school, looking for students who didn't wear clothes and/or shoes properly or who are late for school. They catch them and write their names so they will get points for doing wrong things. If they get too many points they have to work for the school. If they get even more points after that, or an extremely high number of points, then they have to transfer to another school.

The concept of the Hall monitor has entered into popular culture in the US, and is frequently used as plot device or script elements in children's entertainment.

In this context, hall monitors are frequently portrayed as being similar to police officers or security guards, and their requests to see students' hall passes are commonly used as allegory to requests for ID by the police.

In The Simpsons episode "Separate Vocations", Bart Simpson becomes an authoritarian hall monitor after spending the day on a police ridealong; while in Codename: Kids Next Door episode Operation: P.I.N.K.E.Y.E., the school's hall monitor is portrayed as a corrupt Irish-American detective who turns a blind eye to adult schemes. In the South Park episode "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy," Eric Cartman grossly abuses his power as hall monitor, which he portrays in the style of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

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