This educational leadership case involves a teacher who duct-taped a student’s mouth shut and placed an index card over it for misbehaving during class. Prior to the act in question, the plaintiff, an eleven-year-old student, was repeatedly reprimanded for talking out of turn. His teacher, the defendant in this case, asked the boy not to shout out answers without first raising his hand. After scolding the student on four separate occasions, the teacher took the boy and placed him in a chair in the corner of the classroom. Here, she placed a piece of duct tape over the boy’s mouth and attached a card to the tape which read, “I will not speak out of turn during class!” The student spent the next thirty minutes sitting in the corner of the classroom before being sent to the principal’s office.
