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November 19, 2019 - 2:05 PM
A B.C. teacher under scrutiny for inappropriate physical contact and "belittling" students has been suspended for one week and ordered to take several courses.
Jason Alexander Hop Wo, a teacher on call in Cowichan Valley during the 2015-2016 school year, was ordered to take anger management classes and a mandatory course on creating a positive learning environment after several instances of yelling at and belittling students in his classes.
According to a discipline outcome report from the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, Hop Wo was teaching a Grade 4/5 class from Dec. 10-15, 2015 when he told a student that “because the student behaved like a kindergartener, the student would be treated like one,” the report reads.
During that one-week employment, Hop Wo also grabbed a student by the shirt to move the student back in line, told students not to eat inside a theatre and confiscated their snacks before eating a snack himself, grabbed one student by the wrist and pushed them out the door at the lunch break, “shoved a student as a method of hallway management because he thought the student had been speaking when the student should not have been, and he gave detentions to four students who, while not following his explicit directions to run, were in the process of assisting another teacher in passing along a message to some students on the other side of the track.”
Hop Wo returned to the same school Jan. 4 and Jan. 5, 2016 to teach a Grade 3/4 class, when he called a student a fool, used the word “panty face” and told the class they suck. One student cried after being yelled at and told to leave the classroom, while another was hit on the head with a piece of paper to get their attention. That student also cried as a result.
The report suggests that Hop Wo also threw a student’s pencil crayons into the garbage when the student failed to switch tasks in a timely manner and tore a student’s decorated label in half in front of the student after telling them to “stop whining.”
Hop Wo was disciplined by School District 79 and resigned from the on-call list March 4, 2016.
After gaining employment as an elementary school teacher in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district for the 2017-2018 school year, Hop Wo’s actions were again put under the spotlight after inappropriate contact with a Grade 2 student in his class.
The student was arguing with another student when they entered the classroom after the morning bell. An education assistant tried to redirect the argument by asking the student to put away their belongings and prepare for class. However, the student did not respond and continued their argument while sitting in their cubby.
“Hop Wo intervened by reaching down and using both his hands to pull Student A up by his shoulders from the cubby, turn him and move him towards the door. As he did so, he said to Student A in a loud voice "move now,’” the report reads.
As a result, Hop Wo was suspended without pay for three days at the start of the 2018-2019 school year and completed an anger management course.
Hop Wo admitted to the facts in both matters stated in the report and agreed to a one-week suspension of his certificate of qualification from Nov. 3 to Nov. 9, 2019. He must also complete the positive learning environment course with satisfactory results or face further suspensions.
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