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November 03, 2023 - 6:00 PM
A BC teacher was suspended for three days after he "made contact" with a student in a welding workshop.
Randy Peter Faresin was volunteering in a metal fabrication program when he noticed a grade 12 student was missing a guard on a grinder.
His reaction to the lack of a protective guard led to a five-day suspension from his school district in December 2021, followed more recently by a three-day suspension from the provincial teacher regulator.
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The students' welding skills were being evaluated at BC Institute of Technology in May 2021, according to a decision from the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.
No one was using the grinder at the moment and it's not clear whether it was plugged in. When Faresin saw it, he "angrily" asked whose it was and a student admitted it was theirs.
He approached the student and "made physical contact" with their abdomen using his hand, according to the decision. He proceeded to "loudly" lecture the student on the dangers of an exposed blade on a grinder.
The nature of how he made contact with the stomach isn't clear, but he also told the student it was "nothing compared to" an injury from the grinder's blade, according to the decision.
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His employer, the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district, sent Faresin a letter of discipline and suspended him for five days without pay in December 2021. It also required Faresin to attend a workshop on respecting boundaries along with five counselling sessions.
In January 2022, the district reported the incident to the provincial regulator, which investigated and officially suspended his licence for three days in October 2023.
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