A New Jersey substitute teacher was fired from her job and placed under investigation after her third grade students said she taped their mouths shut.
The teacher, whose name has not been released, allegedly taped the mouths of several students at Winfield Scott School No. 2 in an attempt to keep them quiet, The Newark Star-Ledger reported. Five students reported the incident to their parents. The parents notified the official third-grade teacher, who then told school administrators on Monday.
"We consider this serious," Donald Goncalves, spokesman for the Elizabeth, New Jersey school board, told the newspaper. "We took the teacher out of the classroom and she will no longer be working for us."
The incident reportedly occurred May 29 after lunchtime. The substitute teacher made the third-graders play the "quiet game," where she placed a pink, fabric-type tape over their mouths, school board attorney Bruce Rosen told The Newark Star-Ledger.
"We kept talking too much. She got very frustrated then she called on me and four students to tape (our) mouths," student Angelique Correa Henderson, 9, told PIX11. "It hurt," she said.
"My heart kept on beating fast," she told NBC New York.
Munford Henderson, the 9-year-old's father, was outraged that a teacher would harm his child.
"I don't understand what she was thinking," he told NBC New York. "We're talking about kids. You're sworn to protect and teach, not to hurt them and put them in fear."
School administrators requested that local police investigate the incident. The school also notified the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency, Rosen told The Newark Star-Ledger.
The teacher, who has no prior complaints about her teaching methods, was initially suspended from the list of substitute teachers used by the school. But she has since been permanently removed, the newspaper reported.
The Elizabeth police and the DCPP are continuing the investigation into the allegations.
