Vancouver Island teacher suspended for inappropriate comments
Credit to Author: Scott Brown| Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:23:46 +0000
A substitute teacher on Vancouver Island has been disciplined by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation for inappropriate comments made during a Grade 8 field trip.
Joshua Frederick Roland Laurin, who was employed as a teacher on call at a Campbell River school last November, when he was overheard saying he did not like his job or being around kids during a field trip with Grade 8 students.
Laurin also said he wanted to use one of his students to beat two other students to death and injure a third.
According to the agreed statement of facts in the commissioner’s ruling, Laurin then told the students back in class that if he was going to die the following day, he would want to hurt students as he would not then get into any trouble.
“Some students who heard these comments described them as ‘weird’ and reported feeling shocked by them, although they thought that Laurin was joking,” the ruling said.
Following the incident, School District 79 (Campbell River) issued Laurin a letter of discipline and suspended him from its TOC list from Dec. 3 to Dec. 21.
He was also required to complete a course on reinforcing professional boundaries.
The B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation considered the previous discipline and handed Laurin an additional one-day suspension.
“Laurin failed to appreciate how his comments might be interpreted by students,” the commissioner said in the ruling.