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A Vancouver teacher has been suspended for two days after asking a Grade 7 student if they had a crush on him and whether they had a “special connection,” according to B.C.’s teaching regulator.
Nathaniel Hyde agreed to the suspension after his interactions with the student in January of this year, according to a consent agreement posted by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.
The agreement says that Hyde passed the student a sticky note, which the student dropped on the floor.
“Later the same day … Hyde was sad and talked to [the student] about their dropping the note and how it made him feel,” the agreement reads.
When the student told him they hadn’t intended to drop the note, the agreement states Hyde told the student that “it feels like we have a special connection, right?”
The regulator says the following week Hyde asked the student if they “had a crush on him or something,” which left the student upset and shaking.
Hyde then approached the student twice afterwards, first to say that he didn’t mean to make them uncomfortable, and the second time to say that he “did not want to get fired,” the regulator found.
After the student’s parents emailed Hyde and asked to meet, the regulator says the teacher admitted his question to the Grade 7 student was inappropriate and that he had scared them.
The student told the regulator that their perception of Hyde was that he would become upset if they “acted as if they didn’t care about him,” and Hyde had compared the student to his spouse.
According to the agreement, Hyde was suspended for five days by the Vancouver school district in June this year.
In addition to another two-day suspension handed out by the regulator, Hyde was also ordered to take a course around respecting professional boundaries.
“Hyde breached his privileged position of power and trust as a teacher by failing to respect appropriate teacher-student boundaries,” the regulator said.