VANCOUVER — A teacher who reduced a student to tears by positioning her atop desks with her legs bent to demonstrate a lesson on rock formations for his Grade 7 science class has agreed to quit the profession.
“You are the rock and I am the lava, the hot stuff,” David Hobbs jokingly told the Grade 7 girl during the classroom demonstration, according to a discipline decision released Wednesday by the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch.
He then rubbed her legs from her calves to her buttocks to show how lava turns to rock, the ruling says.
Hobbs said he recalled holding the student’s ankles but told the regulation branch he did not remember touching her in any other way. Nevertheless, he admitted to professional misconduct and agreed to the cancellation of his teaching certificate as of July 1.
Hobbs also instructed three male students to lie on top of one another and squatted on them lightly to demonstrate the impact of pressure on the bottom layer of rock, the decision says. The girl was told to crawl past them on hands and knees as the magma.
Another teacher, Ronald Norman Ball, also agreed never to teach again after he admitted he sexually harassed a female colleague in 2010 by placing his hands on her buttocks.
Albert Doerksen, meanwhile, was reprimanded by the agency for several insulting comments he made to students, preaching and lecturing on issues outside the curriculum.
Hobbs and Ball were in public schools. Doerksen was an independent school teacher. The schools were not identified.
