A Waterbury teacher who was placed on administrative leave for allegedly bullying students in her classroom has been suspended for three days without pay, effective today, according to school officials, and she will reassigned to the adult education department after Spring Break. Mary Lou Addona was placed on leave after she was secretly recorded as saying she wanted to go "one-on-one" with a "crybaby" student so she could "punch him right in the face.
The recording of Addona was taped after eighth grader Jesus Velez got into a disagreement with the reading teacher during lunch. Classmate Aaron Stewart, who shared Jesus' discomfort with the teacher, suspected her frustration might continue, so he decided to record the beginning of the next class on his iPod.
NBC Connecticut listened to the entire recording, which was done without Addona's knowledge. In a portion of the recording, you can hear the teacher lash out at Jesus, who wasn't in the room. About 10 seconds later, you can hear her go on about Jesus. In an interview with NBC Connecticut last month, Jesus' mom, Ellise Vasquez, said she felt "disgusted, upset, mad, angry everything else" after she heard the recording for the first time.
How can she talk to my son that way," the mother of three said. Later in the four-minute recording, you can hear Addona confront another boy, who was apparently a new student in her class. Blake, what kind of name is Blake? Irish, Italian, French, what are you? NBC Connecticut went to Addona's home to get her reaction to the recording in March, but no one answered the door.
Both Aaron and Jesus say their teacher is generally "cool," but will sometimes lose it out of the blue. Aaron said she's been "saying rude comments for about two months now. It's not the first time that she did it, it's just the first time that she got caught," Vasquez added. When Vasquez met with NBC Connecticut in March, she said she had not sent Jesus back to school because he's nervous about how the students and other teachers are going to react.
