Tape Over the Mouth – Harmless Or Child Abuse?

A local Florida teacher took discipline to a whole new (read: bizarre) level last week when she reportedly taped her chatty student's mouth shut with packing tape.

13-year-old seventh grader Jazlyn Freel claims the incident took place during a routine science class.

"She asked me to stop talking, and then a couple minutes went by, and I started to talk again, and she came to me and put it on my mouth," she said. "I had to cough, so I took the first piece off, so she went into her desk, and she took another piece out, and she put it on my mouth again."

Though the teacher reportedly claimed the act was a joke, Freel went to an administrator with another classmate whose mouth was also taped shut.

The teacher has since been removed from the school.

Watch the full report below, courtesy of WSVN-TV.

[WSVN-TV]

I'm willing to bet the teacher was just being funny, like I said, this kind of stuff happened to me often in school.  My mouth was always getting me into a trouble (a sign of things to come).  I remember once when I was in a ninth grade Spanish class we had to do an oral performance for 2-3 minutes about two friends.  The teacher told us if we got stuck we could stop and ask "como se dice en Espanol..." and then the word in English, which translated to "How do you say in Spanish..."  My story was about two female friends, Maria and Martina.  Early in my story I stopped to ask my teacher (who was in her early 70s and in her last year teaching before retirement), "Come se dice en Espanol 'lesbians?'"  The elderly professora was NOT amused, and shot out of her chair faster than I'd ever seen a person that age move.  Let's just say I WISH she would have put tape over my mouth...  True story!  - The Rob