Looking back, most people can remember being taught by a schoolteacher who was either incompetent, insane, or both; someone who should never be made the admin of a WhatsApp group, let alone look after a classroom of young, impressionable kids. When I was in school, we had a fair few teachers who made us all shake our heads in dismay. We had a physics teacher who, among other things, called a boy named Greg "Graham" for seven years, and another who managed to lock herself in a stationary cupboard.
But being a teacher is a hard job, and to do it you need to learn to communicate civilly and maintain order and decorum in your classroom ... which is something I don't think I'd ever be able to do. Seriously; I don't have what it takes to do that job, and if some elementary school kid started mouthing off at me, it would probably take all my willpower not to reply with some unbelievably rude response. However, it turns out that a foul-mouthed Canadian teacher has had much the same problem, and has since been suspended without pay as a result of the NSFW insults she delivered to students.
Jennifer Elizabeth Green-Johnson is a teacher at Dunnville Secondary School who truly has no filter. This week she pleaded guilty to professional misconduct for the second time in two years, and as a result, has been suspended for two months by the Ontario College of Teachers disciplinary committee, after she admitted to numerous accounts of inappropriate language and the verbal abuse of students.
Some examples of her more cringe-worthy comments allegedly include (but are not limited to) stating "Why don't you lick me where I fart?" to one person, and "f*ck you" to another. On one occasion she stated that a class member wanted to "stare at my daughter's *ss", and called another a "bloody paedophile." She even told one student that they looked like "a frumpy old lady" because of the way they were dressed, and slapped another on the head and told them to "grow some balls."
Commenting on the verdict, lawyer Christine Wadsworth stated: "It’s a serious consequence and because it’s a serious consequence… it sends a strong message to the profession ... Teachers set the tone for their class and students look to teachers about what behaviour is or isn’t appropriate. [It’s] obvious that you shouldn’t slap a student in the head – whatever the explanation is for doing so."
This is apparently the second time that Green-Johnson has been officially reprimanded; she was punished in 2016 for making a number of similarly-inappropriate comments to students in 2012. Back then she allegedly stated: "So you like it from behind?” after watching a student climb on another’s back, and told her class that she needed a microscope to find an actor’s penis. Wow: that is someone that I would not want to share detention with.
