A B.C. teacher has been disciplined for making inappropriate physical advances and comments to high school students on several occasions.
According to a decision from the British Columbia Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, the teacher, Shadrick Cain, worked at a high school in Victoria at the time of his inappropriate behaviour.
The first complaint about Cain was made in September 2023 about the 2021/2022 school year involving a Grade 10 student.
The Commissioner’s report states that he had made unwanted physical contact with multiple students, including touching a student’s shoulder, touching another student’s waist, and bringing his face inches away from a student while leaning over to look at their work.
In the following school year, when the student was in Grade 11, the physical advances continued. The Commissioner’s report says he gave the student several side hugs and rubbed the student’s shoulder.
On a separate occasion, while a student was chatting with a group of teachers, Cain came up to the student, put his arm around them, and asked, “Are they bothering you?”
He also gave that same student a side hug when commenting that he was proud of them for coming to class more often, which the student said made them “extremely uncomfortable.”
A separate set of complaints pertains to some comments Cain made to students in class when discussing homophobia.
According to the decision, Cain said that if a student were to say, “you f**king f*g” in class, that student would be told their language was not permissible. Cain said if they continued, they would be removed from class and asked to write an apology letter.
Cain also said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’m attracted to silky long hair, short women, and big butts.”
He then talked about the feelings he gets when he’s attracted to someone, saying he gets sweaty and gets the butterflies.
Another comment he made once again related to homophobia. He told his students that if they were walking behind someone they found attractive and it turned out they weren’t a woman, “but your friend Bill, he’s really hot, but that doesn’t make you gay.”
The Commissioner’s decision reports that three students left the class because Cain’s comments made them so uncomfortable.
“Cain also told students that they should ask for the phone numbers of people they are interested in because ‘you never know,'” the decision adds.
For the inappropriate touching, Cain was given a letter of discipline and suspended for five days without pay. The letter said Cain was to cease physical touching and side hugging.
For his inappropriate comments, Cain was sent another letter of discipline. He was asked to work with his peers to develop a better and more inclusive plan to discuss transgender issues.
The B.C. teacher also agreed to a three-day suspension between Oct. 14 and 16 of this year and was also required to complete a course on professional boundaries.