B.C. teacher reprimanded for using 'bad cop tactics,' telling students he would 'kick their ass'

A B.C. teacher has received a reprimand for an incident in which he told a pair of misbehaving students he would beat them up if he were in high school.

The incident occurred last year, according to a summary of a consent agreement published Tuesday by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation. 

The summary is extremely limited in the details it shares. It does not name the teacher, nor the school district where the incident occurred, nor the behaviour for which the students got in trouble.

According to the summary, the anonymization is intended to "protect the identity of students who were harmed, abused or exploited by the teacher."

The secondary school where the teacher worked had a "student behaviour interventions policy" that "required certain chronic student issues to be dealt with by the school’s vice principal," the summary reads.

"The teacher had heard that two students had been engaged in concerning behaviour," it continues. "The teacher had spoken with one of the students about such conduct on a few previous occasions. Under the policy, repeated instances of this kind of conduct should have been addressed with the students by the school’s vice principal."

Instead of referring the matter to the vice principal, however, the teacher confronted the two students on two consecutive days, according to the summary.

On the first day, when the students denied the allegations against them, he told them they were lying and said "he would find out more information about what they had done."

"The second time the teacher confronted the students, he was visibly angry and used self-described 'bad cop' tactics in addressing them," the summary reads. "This included using a raised voice, profanities, and telling the students that if he were in high school he would 'kick your a** right now.' Both students reported feeling threatened and unsafe after this exchange."

The teacher's school district issued him a letter of discipline on June 30, 2022, suspending him for three days without pay and requiring him to "complete a course on restorative action."

He served the suspension from Sept. 6 through 8, 2022.

The district also submitted a report about the teacher's conduct to the commissioner, who concluded a formal reprimand was an appropriate consequence.

The teacher agreed to the reprimand in a consent resolution agreement with the commissioner, acknowledging that his behaviour constituted professional misconduct.