MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Usually when young students are punished for acting up, teachers send them to the office, have them sit in the corner, or hold them inside for recess.

You know, the types of punishments that exist within the borderlines of sanity.

But a Memphis teacher recently took a new approach to discipline when she locked a 5-year-old girl in a classroom closet and then left the school for the day.

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Shelby County Schools said Kristin Oshfelt, a teacher at A.B. Hill Elementary, has been suspended without pay over the incident, CBS reports.

Kindergartner Akeelah Joseph was reportedly trapped in the dark closet for over an hour before a substitute teacher found her, according to her mother.

The ordeal was understandingly traumatic experience for the young girl. Such a trauma would probably be upsetting for an average high school or college student.

“I almost peed on myself because I couldn’t make it to the bathroom,” Akeelah told reporters.

Joseph’s mother, Wanda Joseph, has called for the teacher to be fired.

“You don’t do a child like that,” she said. “If you’re going to punish a child, you tell them to stop and behave or you’re going to write them up and send them to office. You don’t put a child in a closet, period.”

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In a reasonable world, Oshfelt would be immediately fired without a second thought. But she’s probably a union teacher, and may have tenure, which will shamefully allow her to continue to be paid while the school district spends a fortune jumping through all the legal hoops required to fire a teacher in most states.

There’s even a chance a local union could prevent her from being fired, or find a union-friendly arbitrator to order her reinstatement after she’s fired.

That’s the current condition of our union-dominated public education system.