Missouri preschoolers were allegedly forced to stand naked in closet as punishment

[mystery-ak]

Missouri preschoolers were allegedly forced to stand naked in closet as punishment
By Justin Wise - 03/19/19 05:08 PM EDT

A pair of St. Louis teachers were placed on administrative leave in light of accusations that preschool students were forced to stand in a closet naked as a form of punishment.

The teachers allegedly carried out this discipline while leading a Head Start program operated by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center, according to KMOV4, a local news affiliate.

SIUE Police Chief Kevin Schmoll told the station that criminal action and "some charges" could result from its findings.

"Children would misbehave in class and the teacher would have them disrobe and stand them, make them stand inside a closet for five or 10 minutes as their discipline," Schmoll said. "Then they would redress and join the class."

Schmoll said that this form of punishment had been carried out since February and that four of the 20 students in the class were forced to take off their clothing after misbehaving. The students were between the ages of 4 and 5.

Police were notified about the accusations last week, according to KMOV4.

The teacher accused of punishing students in an inappropriate way is 26 and has worked as a teacher with Head Start for three years, police told the news station. A second teacher, who has been with the program for five years, was also placed on leave for allegedly seeing the punishment and failing to report it.

KMOV4 noted that the charges could be filed after children are interviewed at the Children’s Advocacy Center in Belleville, Mo.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/434797-missouri-preschoolers-were-allegedly-forced-to-stand-naked-in

[libertybele]

??? Placed on administrative leave?  They should have been fired!  What they did is just plain sick.   

[Smokin Joe]

Stripping the prisoners has been the M.O. of concentration camps through time.

[mountaineer]

FWIW, this was not in Missouri. It was East St. Louis, IL, and Belleville also is in Illinois. Sloppy reporting from The Hill.

[raml]

This happened a month or two ago and your right not in Missouri although I wonder how often it goes on with children that are young and not necessarily able to communicate their feelings to their parents. I have also heard of children in the special ed being put down and yelled at by teachers calling them stupid and many derogatory names one child was smart enough to tape teachers and it was awful I listened to the tape.

[catfish1957]

This happened a month or two ago and your right not in Missouri although I wonder how often it goes on with children that are young and not necessarily able to communicate their feelings to their parents. I have also heard of children in the special ed being put down and yelled at by teachers calling them stupid and many derogatory names one child was smart enough to tape teachers and it was awful I listened to the tape.

Bet lawyers are ringing their phones off the wall.  The next big story on this item will be "settlements"

[mountaineer]

There recently was a case* in my state of special ed teachers treating students abusively. I don't understand why some people become teachers.

*Link

[Smokin Joe]

There recently was a case in my state of special ed teachers treating students abusively. I don't understand why some people become teachers.

The College I went to had been a reacher's school a couple decades earlier, so education majors still abounded. They never used the first person singular pronoun, always asking how "we" were doing, even when talking with only one person. Pretty easy to spot.

I honestly think some went into teaching because they didn't know what else to do. Many were there looking for 'Mrs degrees', and it offered a low energy fallback position if that failed, at least compared to a Chemistry Major, Physics, Geology, Bio, or pre-med. Some really wanted to teach, and, even then there may have been a few predatory types, but then all that was seriously frowned upon, socially, not the source of a few winks with the evening news.

It takes a really special person to be a good special ed teacher, ans I'm not sure how that has been handled since 'No Child Left Behind" scrambled classroom structure in terms of student of similar abilities being grouped together.