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Local News

Truant teen forced to wear sign outside school

Posted: 06/06/12 at 6:30 am EDT      Last Updated: 06/06/12 at 6:41 am EDT

PLANTATION, Fla. (WSVN) -- A mother is teaching her daughter a tough lesson after the teen's misbehavior led to a number of suspensions from school.

Sabrina Morris is a sixth grade student at Plantation Middle School who has been suspended several times for different infractions. "I got suspended from school because I was taking pictures at first, and then the second suspension was me fighting, and then the third suspension was me leaving school campus," the 13-year-old admitted.

Sabrina's mother, Gyaneth Thompson, was fed up with her daughter's constant suspensions from school and resorted to some extreme parenting. Thompson said, "I'm sending her to school to learn. I am not sending her to go away with friends when she's supposed to be in school ... smoking, and following the wrong crowd."

Thompson made her 13-year-old daughter wear a neon pink sign outside her school's campus. The sign partially reads, "I don't listen to my mother and hang out with the wrong crowd." "I thought she wouldn't do the same thing, and she went back again and did the same thing," Thompson said.

Sabrina had to wear the bright, attention-grabbing sign outside school all morning. She seems to understand the reasoning behind the embarrassing punishment. "It's just to teach me a lesson," she said.

However, the middle school student appears to be unfazed by the shame it should offer. "People could laugh, people could cry, people could do whatever they want to do," she said. "If you wanna laugh, you can go ahead and laugh because it's not gonna hurt me because I really don't care if you wanna laugh."

The teen's mother is hoping her daughter will learn a valuable lesson from the over-the-top punishment. "I hope this can make her make a change and [get rid of] all the bad influences around her, the bad friends. I hope they will leave her [alone]," said Thompson.

Sabrina hopes she does not have to endure that punishment again and wants others to learn from her mistakes. She offered this advice: "Behave yourself, don't do wrong, do right, keep your grades up and stuff like that."

(Copyright 2012 by Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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