The teacher allegedly spoke about gangs, rape and swore at students. Photo / 123rf
A teacher allegedly told students that if they misbehaved they would end up in one of the “n***er gangs”.
The woman also allegedly threatened to chase students with a gun, talked about rape and violence in front of her class and made derogatory comments about her students and colleagues.
The teacher, who has interim name suppression, is now before the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal where she’s facing allegations of serious misconduct while teaching at two different schools.
A student at one of the schools gave evidence before the tribunal in Palmerston North today that the teacher would pace at the front of the classroom and rant at her students for up to an hour.
In one instance he claimed that she said if they didn’t behave or succeed at school they would end up in one of the “n***er gangs”.
“There wasn’t really an inciting reason for the topic to arise, she would just talk and talk and talk, and eventually her talking would lead almost into her like talking points I guess,” said the student, who was 12 at the time when she taught at his school in 2021.
“What she was saying felt like it was an assumption she was making that felt kind of crazy. It was strange to make such a blanket statement.”
The student said that some learners in the class found the teacher’s comments funny and that she was just being friendly, but there was a distinct divide about her teaching style and attitude.
“To some students, she was laid back and relaxed and would let them do what she wanted, but those students tended to be ones who didn’t prioritise education,” he said.
“The students who didn’t enjoy her conversations felt her management style was loose.”
The student claimed that the teacher said their former teachers had abandoned them because they didn’t care about their students, and that was why they had left.
While the woman was not his usual teacher he felt he wasn’t learning anything from her and told his parents about her behaviour, who then made a complaint to the principal.
The mother of a female student at the same school said that her daughter came home in 2021 visibly upset and said that her teacher had been talking about sexual abuse and rape at school.
“She was using words she shouldn’t be familiar with, she used the term incest and I was quite disturbed by that,” the woman said.
“She used words like rape and incest.”
The teacher’s lawyer, Daniel Vincent, said that his client had mentioned rape to her class of year 5 students in the context of the Māori land wars and colonisation.
However, the girl’s mother said her daughter did not mention colonisation or the land wars as context for having learnt those words.
She then emailed the school’s principal with her concerns.
According to the notice of charge before the tribunal, the teacher was working at another intermediate school where she allegedly also spoke about gangs, about a family member being murdered, made comments about a student’s ethnicity and culture and threatened to give learners a “hiding.”
A child at that school gave evidence to the tribunal that the teacher was his reliever one morning in 2022.
The boy, who was 11 at the time of the alleged events, claimed that after being the first to complete an assigned maths worksheet he approached the teacher and asked what he should do next. When he was told that it was free time, he responded by saying that usually, the class would do more work than just a few pages before getting being allowed to do nothing.
The student claimed that the teacher began swearing at him and told him; “Get your ugly Indian face out of my face.”
“I did not know what I did wrong,” the boy said, “I was only telling her I was supposed to do more work.
The student also claimed that the teacher had told another student she would shoot him with a gun if he continued misbehaving and that she had given students soft drink cans she had retrieved from her car.
The student also claimed that she left the classroom to go to her car several times and told her students to tell anyone who asked that she was in the bathroom.
After the school day ended, the student told the tribunal that he and several other students agreed to go home and tell their parents what had happened.
Another aspect of the charges against the teacher is that she failed to inform one of the schools that she had conditions on her teaching registration and that she had in the past voluntarily agreed not to teach.
The hearing continues tomorrow.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
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