Teacher had 5th graders write to prison inmate

(NEW YORK DAILY NEWS) — A Queens teacher forced her fifth-graders to make holiday cards for a repulsive pen pal — a jailed boyfriend who has a taste for child porn and a conviction for gun possession.

Melissa Dean instructed the youngsters at Public School 143 in Corona to draw cards for her beau in December because she “thought it was a nice thing to do,” investigators said.

But a guard at Groveland Correctional Facility in upstate Livingston County disagreed, intercepting the 27 letters for John Coccarelli and alerting Dean’s principal.

“It was bad judgment,” said the city’s special commissioner of investigation, Richard Condon. “She certainly did not have permission.”