If you were an HR director at a school where a teacher swore at students and couldn’t keep kids from chasing each other around the classroom with a baseball bat, what steps would you take?
Victoria, Australia’s top teaching watchdog says a teacher accused of swearing at 11-year-old students can keep his teaching license. The Victoria Institute of Teaching (VIT) did find the unidentified teacher guilty of incompetence for failing to adequately supervise students, maintain a safe environment or adequately protect students from harm.
The teacher left the school where he had problems but found a teaching job elsewhere, according to the newspaper, The Australian.
Among the accusations against the teacher, he allegedly:
- permitted a Year 5 student to climb over a tennis court fence
- failed to take action after a fight between two pupils
- allowed students to wander off, and
- dropped the f-bomb twice in front of students.
Here’s the best part: He also allowed students to wrestle in the classroom. His defense: He said he was showing his pupils the difference between real wrestling at the Commonwealth Games and fake TV wresting. (TV wrestling is fake?)
The VIT panel found the teacher’s wrestling explanation was plausible!
The panel wrote in its judgment, “The conduct was related to a relatively short period of time in a career that spanned nearly seven years.”
The school drew pupils from a disadvantaged community. Many of the students had various behavioral problems.