Delta teacher disciplined for recounting days as a school bully to students

A teacher in Delta, BC, who told her Grade 2 students about how she bullied other kids when she was young has been disciplined for several problematic things that happened in her classroom.

Cindy Chi-Ching Tong will have her teaching certificate suspended for one day and will have to complete a course, according to a decision posted Tuesday on the BC government’s website.

The classroom problems referenced in the decision happened in the 2020-2021 school year, when Tong told the class stories from her past. Those included that she started bullying other students in Grade 4 and continued being a bully through high school.

Tong told students she made a peer eat an orange rind and smeared dog poop on another classmate’s locker. In high school, Tong also said she punched a student who’d run away from home.

She also told them she sometimes had bad dreams that came true, and that she wore a necklace to stop the dreams from happening.

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In addition, Tong frequently showed movies in class — once for two straight days while she completed report cards. The problem was these movies were often PG-13, and one from the Halloween franchise was rated R. Some students reported feeling frightened.

At another point, Tong also distributed “nature notebooks” to her students that contained Bible verses. At Christmas, she had students copy a Bible story into their journals.

She would also publicly identify which students were getting “easy” versus “hard” homework on Google Classroom.

In addition, the discipline committee found Tong didn’t set lesson plans and would often assign worksheets to students without teaching the subject first, leaving them to figure it out on their own.

“If students did not understand what they were being taught, Tong would appear visibly frustrated. Some students reported feeling afraid as a result,” the discipline decision read.

The BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation heard about the case after the school district reported it, but by that time Tong had already resigned from her position at the Delta School District.

Once she completes the course and qualification suspension outlined in the discipline agreement, she will still be eligible to teach.