A B.C. elementary school teacher has been suspended for failing to maintain appropriate boundaries with a Grade 7 student—including by asking if the child “had a crush on him.” Nathaniel Patrick Hyde was working for the Vancouver School District when he had a series of inappropriate interactions with the student back in January, according to a consent agreement he signed with B.C.’s commissioner for teacher regulation. In one incident on Jan. 26, Hyde told the student: “It feels like we have a special connection, right?” Hyde admitted to asking about the “crush” two days later, in an art room where the teacher had requested the Grade 7 student’s help returning supplies. The child was “upset and shaking” after that interaction, according to the consent agreement. Hyde approached the same student twice after they returned to class—first saying he didn’t mean to make the child “uncomfortable,” then later saying he “did not want to get fired.” At recess, the student went to the office to call home and asked to be picked up. Hyde had a meeting with the student’s parents the next day, during which he acknowledged scaring their child and that his question wasn’t appropriate. “Hyde attempted to explain his comments by referencing changes he observed in (the student’s) social group and by comparing himself and his experiences to those of (the student),” the agreement reads. Prior to those interactions, the student reported having felt Hyde would “become upset if they acted as if they didn’t care about him,” and said the teacher had “compared them to his spouse and thought they were similar,” according to the document. The school district suspended Hyde for five days without pay in June, and had him attend a course on professional boundaries through the Justice Institute of B.C. over the summer. The commissioner for teacher regulation also reviewed the circumstances and decided to issue a further two-day suspension of Hyde’s teaching certificate, effective on Thursday and Friday of this week. Hyde’s failure to “create and maintain an emotionally safe and positive learning environment” for the student was factored into the decision, as was the fact that he took responsibility for his conduct, according to the agreement. In signing the document, the teacher agreed “not to make any statement orally or in writing which contradicts, disputes or calls into question the terms of this agreement or the admissions made in it.”
