B.C. teacher banned for 15 years after 1,000 phone calls with student

Vacant desks are pictured at the front of a empty classroom is pictured at McGee Secondary school in Vancouver on Sept. 5, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

A British Columbia high school teacher who developed an inappropriate relationship with a student over the course of hundreds of private messages and more than 1,000 phone calls has been banned from teaching for at least 15 years.

The teacher, whose name and school district are not identified by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation in order to protect the privacy of the student, “misused their position of power and trust to exploit a student for the teacher’s own personal advantage,” according to a summary of the consent agreement reached by the two parties and published online Tuesday.

The teacher’s behaviour was reported to the provincial commissioner in March 2024 after the school district found the teacher and the student had used the school’s messaging platform to exchange nearly 200 messages with each other over a three-week period.

Most of the messages were sent between 8 p.m. and midnight, according to the regulator. “These messages included giving each other compliments about their physical appearance and about having a slow dance together,” the summary says.

About three weeks after the messages began, the teacher and student both attended a school social event.

“At the end of the evening, the teacher and student exchanged messages on MS Teams about the teacher picking up the student,” the summary says. “The last message on MS Teams was from the student giving the teacher the student’s cellphone number.”

More than 1,000 phone calls would be made between the two over the next 16 months, “and many of the calls were longer than 1.5 hours,” according to the commissioner.

When questioned by the district administration about the relationship, the teacher “was dishonest about having contact with the student,” the summary says.

The school district suspended the teacher on March 8, 2024. One month later, the provincial commissioner suspended the teacher’s certificate under a section of the Teachers Act that allows the commissioner to suspend a certificate before a full hearing of the matter if the commissioner determines there’s a risk of physical harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or significant emotional harm to a student.

The teacher and the commissioner later entered the consent resolution agreement in which the teacher admitted their actions constituted professional misconduct and were in breach of professional standards.

The teacher agreed to the full cancellation of their teaching certificate and further agreed not to reapply for a teaching certificate for 15 years.

“The teacher’s conduct was a fundamental breach of a teacher’s duty to students and to the public,” the commissioner concluded in the summary. “The teacher was dishonest and did not maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession.”

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