A BC teacher has been handed a 15-year ban for exchanging “intimate and increasingly personal” text messages and phone calls with a student.
On Tuesday, the BC teacher regulator published a consent agreement with the teacher online.
The teacher and school district are not named due to a requirement under the Teachers Act to protect the identity of the student.
The agreement said the school district made a report to the regulator in March 2024 about the incident.
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Over three weeks, the teacher and secondary student sent over 190 messages to each other over the school’s MS Teams platform.
According to the document, a majority of the messages were exchanged between 8 pm and midnight.
“These messages included giving each other compliments about their physical appearance and about having a slow dance together,” the regulator said.
About three weeks after the messages started, the teacher and student attended a school social event. At the end of the event, the teacher and student exchanged messages about the teacher picking up the student.
The last message that night was from the student giving the teacher their cellphone number.
“The teacher and the student made calls to one another by phone over 1,000 times in an approximately 16-month period and many of the calls were longer than 1.5 hours,” the regulator said.
According to the agreement, the teacher lied about having contact with the student when questioned by the district.
On Mar. 8, 2024, the teacher was suspended.
The teacher then entered into a consent resolution agreement with the regulator, in which they admitted professional misconduct.
Ultimately, the teacher agreed to the cancellation of their certificate and to the 15-year ban.
The regulator said the teacher misused their position of power and trust to exploit the student, their conduct was a fundamental breach of a teacher’s duty to students and the public, and the teacher was dishonest and did not maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession.
