A 68-year-old relief teacher who was recorded by students \u201cbragging\u201d about his sexual escapades, including referring to his favourite sexual position as \u201cdoggy style\u201d, has blamed them for baiting him into the conversation.<\/p>\n
Graham Reinheimer answered a series of questions from a class of 15-year-old boys about the best place to have sex, what his \u201cbody count\u201d was, and how many times he\u2019d masturbated in his life.<\/p>\n
Reinheimer answered the questions by saying \u201cone beep\u201d to mean yes and \u201ctwo beeps\u201d to mean no.<\/p>\n
Unknown to Reinheimer, one of\u00a0the students\u00a0recorded part of the conversation on his cellphone, where a student can be heard asking how old the teacher was when he had his \u201cbest female\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a long time ago. The woman I\u2019m with at the moment, I mean, I quite like her,\u201d Reinheimer replied.<\/p>\n
After the conversation, Reinheimer told the class not to tell anyone and to \u201ckeep it between me and the class\u201d.<\/p>\n
Four days later, the parents of a student in the class made a complaint to the school after hearing the recording on their son\u2019s phone.<\/p>\n
The school investigated and interviewed three students who overheard the conversation, before referring the matter to the\u00a0Teachers\u2019 Disciplinary Tribunal.<\/p>\n
The tribunal this week issued its findings into the incident.<\/p>\n
According to those findings, Reinheimer told the school\u2019s rector that he\u2019d lost control of the class and failed to maintain professional distance. He subsequently removed himself from the school\u2019s reliever list.<\/p>\n
In submissions to the tribunal, Reinheimer said that the conversation with the students had \u201cbriefly transformed awkwardly into learner-led, candid banter\u201d, and that he had encountered issues with student behaviour in the class before it occurred.<\/p>\n
Reinheimer said he regretted the exchange and believed the students had \u201ccyber-baited\u201d him, a process where students will irritate or bait a teacher until they \u201ccrack\u201d, filming the incident on their mobile to post the footage online and embarrass the teacher or the school.<\/p>\n
One of the students said the conversation started off fun but quickly became weird, and that some of the comments made him feel uncomfortable, and that it felt as if Reinheimer was \u201cbragging\u201d about his sexual escapades.<\/p>\n
Another student said the conversation made him uneasy and that, in general, it was inappropriate, strange, irrelevant, time-wasting and childish.<\/p>\n
A Complaints Assessment Committee that prosecuted Reinheimer through the tribunal, on behalf of the Teaching Council, said his behaviour amounted to serious misconduct.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunicating with learners about very personal and sexual matters without a valid context is a listed example of conduct that will breach professional boundaries,\u201d their submissions read.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat the respondent took steps to be covert and conceal what was said afterwards suggests he should not have been engaging in such a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CAC said Reinheimer had an opportunity to model responsible behaviour, in terms of how and when to discuss sex appropriately, but chose instead to reduce the important topic to banter.<\/p>\n
The tribunal found that Reinheimer had participated in the disciplinary process, displayed remorse and accepted he lost control of the class.<\/p>\n
However, it found that he also tried to blame students for being disruptive, and baiting him into the conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe agree that this reflects the respondent\u2019s failure to appreciate that, as the teacher, it is his responsibility alone to shut down or redirect the conversation,\u201d the tribunal found.<\/p>\n
The tribunal opted to censure Reinheimer, order him to complete a professional development course on maintaining professional boundaries and provide any future employer with a copy of the ruling.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 68-year-old relief teacher who was recorded by students \u201cbragging\u201d about his sexual escapades, including referring to his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-97955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}