VANCOUVER -- A gym teacher from Burnaby, B.C. has been handed a one-day suspension after "aggressively" throwing a dumbbell at a student's face last year.
The student managed to catch the dumbbell and wasn't injured, according to a consent resolution agreement that was posted online Tuesday.
The incident happened back in March 2020 while Lawrence Paul Ryan was teaching a physical education class and caught a Grade 12 student trying to toss a dumbbell to a classmate.
After the dumbbell fell to the ground, Ryan asked: "What is stupider, throwing a dumbbell across the gym or trying to catch it?"
When the student tried to explain that dropping the equipment was an accident, Ryan threw the dumbbell at the teenager and asked, "Do you think this is an accident?"
According to the agreement, the teacher threw the dumbbell "aggressively, underhand" from a distance of about three feet, in a manner that would have struck the student's face had it not been caught in time.
The document does not specify which high school Ryan was teaching at the time.
The Burnaby school district responded by issuing a letter of discipline and forcing Ryan to apologize to the teenager and their parents, as well as the four classes that were present during the incident. He also had to undergo counselling.
Earlier this month, the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation reviewed the incident and decided to also suspend Ryan's teaching certificate for one day.
The commissioner found that Ryan "failed to model appropriate behaviour expected of an educator."
