The young teacher had limited authority to teach and knew many of her students personally. Now she's been censured. Photo / 123RF
The behaviour of a female teacher who “bragged” to her students about her sexual experiences, and showed them photos of men she had matched with on dating sites, has been described as “staggering”.
The woman, whose name is suppressed, also bought vapes for students and told them stories about her drug use and drinking.
Students who complained to the school about the woman said they found some of her behaviour “very upsetting” and they felt uncomfortable being in a classroom with her.
“She exposed them to information about her personal life that they did not want or need to know,” the Teachers’ Disciplinary Tribunal said in a recently released ruling.
“She acted as a friend and not a mentor.
“It is difficult to overstate how inappropriately the respondent acted. What she did over an extended period of time was the total opposite of how teachers are meant to interact with students.”
The teacher, who held a Limited Authority to Teach, is no longer working in the profession. If she were, the tribunal said it would probably have cancelled her licence. Instead, it opted to censure her and order her to pay more than $5000 in legal costs.
According to an agreed summary of facts released by the tribunal, the woman was employed as a te reo teacher at an unnamed school and was responsible for students between Years 7 and 13.
She knew some of the students personally.
According to the summary, she “treated students like they were her friends, particularly those in her senior class” and discussed dating, drugs and topics of a sexual nature with them, including her own sexual experiences, in detail.
She would tell them about meeting men on dating sites or while drunk in town.
“I had a guy over last night,” she told students, and showed them a picture of a man, asking them, “Do you think this guy’s hot?”
She also told students about a “sex dream” she’d had about a male teacher aide at the school. Students told the tribunal that she mentioned this particular dream “lots of times”.
While it wasn’t the woman’s role to provide sex education to students, she would give sex talks to various groups of them, with the summary noting that she would “brag” about her sex life during these talks.
“Some students felt very uncomfortable with these conversations and later expressed that they had not wanted to hear this information, particularly about their teacher,” the summary states.
According to the summary, the teacher was asked by students if she wanted to do the “Rice Purity Test”, to which she agreed.
The Rice Purity Test, which originated at Rice University in Texas, involves a series of 100 questions that aim to assess a person’s “innocence” or experience in relation to sex, drugs, alcohol use and crime.
After completing the answers, a person is given a score which tells them how “pure” they are. Questions include whether the person has ever been drunk, used marijuana or run away from the police. Many are sexually explicit.
The teacher answered all the questions and discussed her answers with the students, including telling them the number of people with whom she’d had sexual intercourse.
There were about five students present for this conversation.
The teacher also talked to students about pregnancy, miscarriages and ovarian cancer. One student told the tribunal that the teacher seemed “obsessed” with babies and getting pregnant.
In 2023, the woman told her students she was pregnant and discussed her relationship with the baby’s father, whom she’d met on Tinder. She also showed them a picture of the ultrasound.
According to the summary, however, the ultrasound was not hers, and one of her students recognised the image as being of her nephew. She told the tribunal she found the incident “very upsetting”.
The woman also told her students that she had ovarian cancer and might lose her baby. At no stage did she tell the school about her alleged diagnosis or take sick leave.
According to the summary, she would complain about her family issues, and frequently socialised with students outside school hours.
On several occasions, she and three of her students partied together at her flat, where they drank alcohol, which she had bought for them.
She would drive students to a vape store and buy vapes for them, including some who were under 18. She would also share her vape with students at the school.
Part of the charge included instances in which she swore at students, pulled fingers at them or threatened to give them a “hiding”.
In 2023, two students complained to the deputy principal about the teacher being rude to them, while another complained that she didn’t feel comfortable in the woman’s class.
Several months later, further complaints were made about her inappropriate conversations with students. She was required to meet the principal to discuss the allegations.
She denied the allegations but was put on discretionary leave while the school investigated and interviewed 14 students about her conduct.
After that investigation, a report was made to the Teaching Council, which opted to press charges in the Teachers’ Disciplinary Tribunal.
A Complaints Assessment Committee appointed by the Teaching Council to press charges submitted at a hearing last year that the woman’s behaviour negatively affected students.
“The respondent inappropriately burdened students by oversharing her personal information with them,” the committee said.
“Students found her various comments about sex ‘inappropriate’, ‘unprofessional’, considered they set a ‘bad example’, involved ‘too much information’, and were ‘annoying and frustrating’.”
The committee said reasonable members of the public would expect teachers not to engage in such behaviour, which risked adversely impacting students’ wellbeing as well as their learning.
The teacher told the tribunal that she accepted she had “likely had inappropriate conversations with some students” and blurred the line between teacher and friend.
She said she was very young at the time, had been out of her depth with insufficient support, and had found the transition to teaching difficult with no formal qualifications.
After a hearing late last year, the tribunal found her guilty of serious misconduct.
“The conduct in this case was wide-ranging and extensive. The extent of the misconduct in this case was quite staggering,” the tribunal said.
“It covered almost all imaginable types of inappropriate teacher behaviour apart from having a sexual relationship with a student.”
The tribunal acknowledged that the teacher was relatively young and had only a Limited Authority to Teach, but it was still “difficult to comprehend how someone in a position of authority could behave with such flagrant disregard for her professional obligations and for the welfare and wellbeing of her students”.
It said her behaviour would have shocked people, especially the parents of the children she was teaching.
“Her abdication of her responsibilities as a teacher was so complete. Her behaviour negatively impacted a number of impressionable young people who were entrusted into her care by their parents and by the school.
“We were deeply troubled by the conduct in this case.”
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.