rubber room

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rubber room (plural rubber rooms)

1. (idiomatic, psychiatry) A cell lined with cushions used for confinement of a mentally disturbed person.
   • 2002 December 6, Robert L. Jamieson Jr, “Dec. 7, 1941: From boy to man in one hellish day”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, retrieved 7 August 2014:

     "If you kept on worrying about being killed you could end up in a rubber room."

   • 2003 February 7, Peter Bradshaw, “Punch-Drunk Love”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 7 August 2014:

     Barry is... well, what? Borderline autistic and obsessive-compulsive, with serious anger management issues and a dangerous behavioural disorder that in the real world would get him a one-way ticket to the rubber room.

   • 2013 Jan. 25, Comment by egginmybeer, "The gun lobby’s long reach," Boston Globe (retrieved 7 Aug 2014):

     How is it that the Virginia Tech shooter Seung Cho and Adam Lanza weren't in a rubber room instead of in a classroom shooting people?

2. (idiomatic, education) Especially in New York City, a temporary workplace assigned to a teacher who is not permitted to teach in a classroom because he or she is under disciplinary review.
   • 2010 September 23, Stephen Holden, “Movie Review: Waiting for 'Superman' (2010)”, in New York Times, retrieved 7 August 2014:

     The film briefly visits a “rubber room” in New York City where idle teachers accused of misconduct wait months and sometimes years for hearings while drawing full salaries.

   • 2013 April 25, Corinne Lestch, “Report substantiates misuse of school property accusations against 'rubber roomed' teacher”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 7 August 2014:

     The findings dropped the day before the one-year anniversary of his idling away in the rubber room, where teachers await disciplinary hearings.

• (cell for confinement of mentally disturbed): padded cell
• (temporary workplace for an accused teacher): reassignment center

• “rubber room”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.