For the second time in recent years, a Langley substitute teacher has been disciplined for professional misconduct, this time after making a student cry during class.
Roxann Rojas resigned after the most recent incident, which took place on March 8, 2021, when she was teaching a Grade 5/6 split class in a local elementary school.
The incident involved two students, according to a consent agreement recorded by the B.C. Commission for Teacher Regulation. One of them, Student A, was in Grade 5, but has learning issues and read at a Kindergarten level.
In the morning, Student A was playing with a sandbox in the classroom, when Rojas told them to put it away. When the student asked if they could play with sand later in the day, Rojas took the box and told the student to “shut it.”
The student assumed they were being told to shut up, whereas Rojas meant to shut the sandbox.
Later, as the class was lining up to go outside, and Student A was singing, Rojas asked if they were in Kindergarten, because that was how they were behaving.
Student A asked Rojas how old she was, and Rojas asked Student A’s age.
“This back and forth went on a few times,” the consent agreement said.
Student A was crying when they were escorted out of the classroom by a special education assistant.
There was also an incident with Student B, when Rojas approached the student without a mask on and said “I was a principal!”
Rojas also openly complained to the education assistant, in front of the students, about “how awful the class was” and how Student B, in particular, was awful.
“Rojas also spent time checking messages on her telephone instead of directing students on their assignments,” the consent agreement noted.
For this incident, Rojas has agreed to a one-day suspension of her teaching license, and that by the end of March this year she will complete a course called Creating a Positive Learning Environment at the Justice Institute.
This is not the first time Rojas has faced discipline for classroom incidents.
Back in 2010, the district sent her a letter reminding her that teachers “cannot put their hands on students in a manner that a reasonable person would consider inappropriate.”
She was also suspended for four months without pay from the district in 2019 for behaviour that included an incident in which she shook a student’s chair until the child fell off.
In 2020, the Teacher Regulation Commission suspended her license for two weeks for the same incident.
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