FILE - This March 15, 2017 photo shows the ducky, one of three new tokens that will be included in upcoming versions of the board game Monopoly.
Image Credit: AP Photo/Wayne Parry
November 25, 2020 - 6:30 AM
A B.C. teacher who offered to play boardgames with a student as a reward for improved schoolwork is now required to take a course on personal boundaries, according to a consent resolution agreement.
Edward Joseph Bolanos Dela Luna has been a teacher since 2000 and in March 2019 he was employed as an elementary teacher by Catholic Independent Schools of the Vancouver Archdiocese.
He, according to the decision posted online today, Nov. 24, breached professional boundaries when he invited a student to come to his board games club during spring break.
“The student’s mother consented to this invitation,” reads the decision by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation.
“The boardgames club was located in a common area of Dela Luna’s common building. Dela Luna intended this invitation to be a reward to the student for the student’s academic achievement and improved behaviour.”
When the school caught wind of the invite, however, Dela Luna retracted it at the direction of an administrator before any visit occurred.
On April 3, 2019, the District disciplined Dela Luna by issuing him a letter of discipline and requiring him to complete the Reinforcing Respectful Professional Boundaries course at the Justice Institute of B.C.
On Aug. 25, the commissioner considered this matter and determined to propose a consent resolution agreement to Dela Luna, which he agreed to.
Among other things, he had his licence suspected for two days.
In determining that a suspension and completion of the course are appropriate consequences, the commissioner considered that Dela Luna “showed a lack of understanding of appropriate professional boundaries.”
The commissioner said his conduct had the effect of treating students inequitably.
The punishment for these recent round of issues was compounded by the fact that Dela Luna had been called before the Commissioner of Teacher Regulation seven years earlier for, among other things, swatting a student on the back of the head and then saying it was a fly he was swatting at, and physically stopping another from leaving the class.
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