Demagogue

Confession: although I generally was a well-behaved student in my k-12 school days, I sometimes did my share to drive a substitute teacher slightly batty. Thankfully, I never encountered this response. According to the AP:

A substitute teacher (in Newark, N.J.) will spend a year on probation for tying a mock noose around a young boy’s neck during an after-school program.

Prosecutors said Albert Coleman, Jr. wanted to punish the boy for not following instructions to do his homework. He asked the boy if he knew what strangulation was, made him stand on a chair, then put the looped end of a decorative string that was hanging from a light fixture around the boy’s neck and kicked the chair, prosecutors said.

Coleman, 61, had told a grand jury he was only playing and that the string was never around the boy’s neck.

... The conviction prevents Coleman from ever working as a teacher again.