What's a nice Howard County-educated girl like Keila Foster doing on the "Dr. Phil" show advocating, of all things, corporal punishment in public schools?

Yet there she was for all to see and hear on the program, "Spanking Scandals," aired during May Sweeps month, yet.

A graduate of Howard High ('01), Howard University ('05) and the University of Mississippi with an master's in education ('07) -- no mean academic credentials, those -- Foster says she didn't even know the term "corporal punishment" until being assigned to 450-student North Panola High School in Sardis, Miss., in 2005 as part of her Mississippi Teacher Corps obligation to teach two years in a needy area.

In the Delta region the math teacher found that disciplinary paddling was school policy.

Foster called home to discuss the practice with her Mississippi-born dad, Sam, according to her blog. He verified that it was an accepted part of both upbringing and public school experience there in his day. It still is, he added.

It was that blog, which she was required by MTC to write, through which Dr. Phil's researchers found her for the show. In it, the former Jessup resident describes her own childhood as daughter of Southern-born parents: "Growing up, if I misbehaved, talked back or 'didn't mind' my parents, there was one warning and then the next thing coming was a butt whopping."

Then, as she did on the television show, she explains her acceptance of corporal punishment as a cultural norm for the community in which she was then teaching:

"After contacting my Teacher Corps mentor and finding out the history behind it and the fact that many people in the community still believe in it, I had no problem accepting it. I am an outsider (non-Mississippian) coming into a community I am not from, so who am I to say that their method of discipline does not work."

The school district is racially mixed, she notes, and "all races get paddled." Although "at the beginning it was hard, and I was scared," she used the method at least two or three times a week "if the principal was busy and could not do it then he would give me permission."

When asked by Dr. Phil himself, Foster explained her position that "today's kids need immediate consequences for disruptive behavior," the primary goal of those three licks with a wooden paddle (in front of a witness, but outside the classroom).

"Many children come to school with a lack of discipline at home," she continued. "Anyone who is critical of paddling needs to walk a day in a teacher's shoes."

And indeed Foster was the only one on the TV show, and maybe even in the audience too, representing that point of view. But that didn't faze her.

"I'm good at relating to different types of worlds, so I didn't feel outnumbered," she says. In fact, she'd love to appear there again.

Everyone remained civil both on the show and in the question-and-answer session after the actual taping, which took place last February.

As Foster explained to an audience member asserting that she could deal with disciplinary problems at home and hadn't had to resort to such measures, it's very different when "the father is in jail or not around, the mother works eight to 10 hours a day" and can't come to the phone, let alone get to the school when problems arise.

"She may just say, 'do whatever you have to do to keep them right. That would help me out.' "

The alternative to paddling is out-of-school suspension, which comes with its own set of problems. And according to Foster's experience, paddling, or the prospect of it, does help keep the children under control.

Mississippi is part of the Bible Belt, where "Spare the rod, spoil the child" is an accepted maxim, Foster added during the question-and-answer period, acknowledging that she never saw paddling of the severity described in one of the cases presented on the show.

Which, by the way, was the quintessential Hollywood experience, with limo rides, hair, makeup and wardrobe (she wore her own clothes, but they were professionally prepped for the occasion). And while "pleasant and business-like" Dr. Phil may not be a medical doctor, he was very concerned about the bronchitis she was developing during the taping and which sent her to the emergency room when she got back home. Must have been that L.A. smog.

While she foresees returning to this area in about five years, Foster is currently teaching in Memphis, Tenn., where there is no corporal-punishment policy. She doesn't mind saying that maybe there should be.

Foster's blog is at keilams.blogspot.com.

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