An on-call teacher on Vancouver Island has been suspended for yelling at, belittling and pushing young students.
Jason Alexander Hop Wo was teaching a Grade 4/5 class in the Cowichan Valley on Dec. 10 to 15, 2015, when the events occurred, according to an agreed statement of facts posted by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.
During this time, Hop Wo frequently yelled at and belittled students in the class, telling one student that “because the student behaved like a kindergartener, the student would be treated like one.”
He grabbed a student’s shirt and physically moved the child, according to the document, and grabbed a student by the wrist in another incident.
While on a field trip, Hop Wo took away two students’ snacks inside a theatre while he sat there eating.
The document also says Hop Wo shoved a student in the hallway because he thought the student was talking, and gave detentions to four students for not following his directions to run, when they were assisting another teacher.
On Jan. 4 and 5, 2016, Hop Wo was also found to have frequently yelled at Grade 3/4 students, using words such as “fool,” “panty face” and telling an entire class that they “suck.”
He made two students cry, one by yelling to get out of the classroom, and another by throwing a piece of paper at a student’s head, according to the document.
He also told a student to stop whining and chucked another kid’s crayons in the garbage when the student didn’t complete a task fast enough.
Hop Wo resigned from the on-call list in 2016 after being disciplined by the school district but was hired in 2017 by School District 68 (Nanaimo-Ladysmith) to teach at an elementary school.
In April 2018, he had “inappropriate physical contact” with a Grade 2 student in his class. The document says Hop Wo intervened in an argument between two students by picking up one of the students by the shoulders and yelling “move now.”
The school district suspended him without pay and he completed an anger management course.
The B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation has suspended his certificate of qualification for one week for professional misconduct and he has been ordered to take a course on creating a positive learning environment through the Justice Institute of B.C.
