Box of Shame Makes a Comeback in Seattle Public Schools

In the late spring of 2019 a Whitman Middle School student asked me to watch a video she had taken in her math class. The video showed a 3x3 square made of tape located on the classroom floor.

The square had written on it "Box of Shame".

The student was upset because the teacher was forcing students who the teacher thought were disengaged to sit on the floor in the Box of Shame for the remainder of class. The student described how the teacher would ridicule any student forced to sit in the box and said all the other students were embarrassed that they did not stop the teacher from abusing the students. Most of the students forced to sit in the Box of Shame have IEP's and are in the class to learn math not to be humiliated.

On June 6, 2019 I emailed the district and reported the abuse. The regional supervisor responded as asked if he could view the video.

I sent him a link to my cloud storage,

https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZMNkN7Z9vA63VIfHw8pyry42YhMrymgobty.


As you will see in the emails that the School Board Director for District 1 did not bother to engage.
The abusive teacher used the tried and true "it was a joke" lie and the district very quickly circled the wagons to protect the teacher and principle who was made aware of the practice months earlier.

Is it worth the paper it's written on?

Who really chooses the Seattle Times Education lab stories?

Education Lab is a Seattle Times project that spotlights promising approaches to persistent challenges in public education. It is produced in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network and is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Amazon and City University of Seattle.

The Times ran a story on Monday 9/9/2019 about teachers quitting a private religious school  over policy differences. The Times published the story in the Education lab section. This seems strange because it clearly states that the education lab is a project that spotlights public education. The school in the one sided hit piece article is a private religious school in Shoreline. I wanted to find out if the sponsors condoned the anti-christian comments that the Seattle Times moderators allowed to appear in the comment section. These comments contained threats against the school staff, threats against the students and threats against the companies that have donated to the school.

I first spoke to the Gates Foundation and was told that they did not write or suggest the religious school story. They confirmed they do submit stories and stories ideas that they want published in the Times in the Education Lab section.

Next, I spoke with City University which conformed that they did not sponsor the article nor did they want their name associated with the article and they only sponsor stories they submit.

Amazon has yet to return my phone call.

Given the tendencies of violence by various social justice groups it was reckless of the Times to publish this story. Any incident of violence against the school's property, students or staff will be the responsibility of the Seattle Times.