The teacher appeared before the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal yesterday, where he admitted the charges against him and was found guilty of serious misconduct. If he returns to the teaching profession, after voluntarily not doing so for the last 18 months, he will require sign-off from a GP, a year of supervision and will need to send any future employer a copy of the tribunal’s decision.
The teacher, the school where he taught and the student’s name have all been suppressed on an interim basis.
“I’m disgusted at myself that I’ve done that to a young person,” he told the tribunal.
“I never want to be back here again.”
The teacher said that in retrospect, he should have referred the girl to a school counsellor, dean or deputy principal when she began disclosing mental health issues to him, but weighed her confidentiality against his duty of care.
“At the time, I recall she was insisting on confidentiality on some of the stuff she was discussing,” he said.
“I chose to maintain her trust and confidentiality, but later that trust was abused when I made the request around the medication.”
He said that he fell into the role of an “accidental counsellor” and now knows he’s not equipped to counsel or advise on the personal issues the student was disclosing.
Medication
According to the agreed summary of facts, the student began messaging her teacher over the Microsoft platform Teams, which was used by the school to manage assessments and contact between teachers and students outside of class.
However, she began to divulge to him a range of mental health issues, including a severe eating disorder as well as depression, anxiety and her ADHD diagnosis.
The teacher also disclosed certain issues he was having concerning his home relationships and mental health.
Then, over the summer break the student recovered from her eating disorder and the messaging between the pair decreased. When school returned the teacher messaged the girl and said he was having problems with concentration and asked her to text him before providing his cellphone number.
It was after this that the teacher noted he’d been having trouble finding black-market ADHD medication and asked if the student would sell him some.
Following several excuses to not sell him any of the medication, he said in a text message;
“Yes, I thought it would be more professional to text for drugs rather than Teams. We probably shouldn’t get into such things, being such a closely controlled drug …”
The teacher then apologised, moved on to a different subject and never actually ended up buying any medication from her.
Also included in part of the charges against the teacher were two school trips he claimed to have organised and attended with students, but never actually attended.
In explanation to the tribunal, the teacher said he was instead dealing with family issues at home and didn’t receive pay for the field trips he’d lied to the school about going to.
The tribunal imposed conditions on his practising certificate and will issue its full decision on the penalty at a later date.
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.
