In a recent Washington Post audio posting, Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is shown admitting that she taped shut the mouths of her young students because she could not control their talking while she was working in the Baltimore Public Schools as a Teacher for America teacher. Rhee then laughs about taping her students mouths shut with masking tape and then walking them to the lunchroom. According to Rhee, she tried the tape method after she was unable to keep the little ones from making noise when she marched them through the hallways to lunch.
In an even more disturbing revelation heard on the tape Rhee laughs about when the tape was removed hurting the children and some even started to bleed. Michelle Rhee, along with New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Chicago’s Ron Huberman, have been held up by the corporate news media as examples of the new breed of school district executives, the type of education leaders that public schools need to “shake things up.”
The audio tape of Rhee’s speech was obtained and authenticated by The Washington Post, which until recently had supported Rhee and her methods as D.C. schools chief.
Here’s the link to the audio from The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/08/13/VI2010081305444.html
Rhee’s relentless attacks on tenure and public schools teachers in the D.C. public schools have been praised in the corporate media for the past two years. Rhee is also featured as an example of one of the good guys in the new documentary movie attacking public schools and teacher unions, “Waiting for Superman.”
After finishing two years of public school teaching in Baltimore as part of “Teach for America,” Rhee went on to get corporate sponsorship for a thing called the “New Teacher Project.” The Chicago connection? According to CPS, the “New Teachers Project” provided CPS with the studies about how to get the “best” teachers for Chicago’s public schools.
Rhee said she had poor class-management skills, recalling that her class “was very well known in the school because you could hear them traveling anywhere because they were so out of control.”
On one particularly rowdy day, she said she decided to place little pieces of masking tape on their lips for the trip to the school cafeteria for lunch.
“OK kids, we’re going to do something special today!” she said she told them.
Rhee said it worked well until they actually arrived at the cafeteria. “I was like, ‘OK, take the tape off. I realized I had not told the kids to lick their lips beforehand. …The skin is coming off their lips and they’re bleeding. Thirty-five kids were crying.”
Later, Rhee tried to clarify in an e-mail, saying that the students’ mouths weren’t covered. “I was trying to express how difficult the first year of teaching can be with some humor. My hope is that our new teachers will bring great creativity and passion to their craft while also learning from my own challenges.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/23/teacher-may-lose-job-over-students-with-mouths-taped-shut/
Audio: Michelle Rhee’s Masking Tape Story
Rhee bragged about taping students’ mouths shut while she was a Teach for America ‘teacher’
John Kugler – September 22, 2010
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1675
