Two teachers have been disciplined by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation – one teacher pushed a student into a white board and the other inflated the number of students in his courses to keep his position.
Both teachers worked for the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows School District at the time, but have since resigned from their roles.
Between 2022 and 2023, Peter Buddle agreed that he falsely recorded attendance for and assigned marks to students who were once enrolled in his courses at correctional centers, but had since been released and were no longer attending.
He said he was trying to maintain funding for his teaching position by keeping the students in the school district’s computer system.
He also failed to respond to emails and voice messages from students in his online distance learning courses, as well as their parents. And, he assigned marks to students in his online distance learning courses without properly reviewing their work, giving marks of 100 per cent even when work was incomplete and contained errors.
Buddle had already resigned from his job with the district on Dec. 31, 2023, but agreed to a reprimand.
Jeven Gill, who received her certificate to teach in 2011, was an elementary school teacher in SD42, when she pushed a student backwards into a white board.
The incident happened on June 13, 2023, when Gill was teaching a Grade 6/7 class in the district.
Gill allowed a student and their classmates to play cards as a reward, as long as they played quietly.
However, when the group became noisy, Gill approached them to let them know that the card game would end.
The student then made an offensive comment about someone’s mother, according to the agreed statement of facts.
Gill presumed the comment was made about her mother, although the student maintained the joke was directed at a classmate.
It was then that Gill became visibly angry, yelling at the student and telling the student not to disrespect her mother, very close to the student’s face. Then she placed both hands on the student’s shoulders and pushed them backwards, causing them to stumble, but not to fall, into the whiteboard.
Gill also knocked the student’s baseball hat from their head.
The student and two others in the class reported feeling shocked about the interaction.
Gill had already submitted her resignation in April, effective at the end of the school year, due to the fact she was moving to a different part of the province.
Gill agreed to a one-day suspension of her certificate of qualification on Friday, Dec. 19. She has also greed to complete a course called “Creating a Positive Learning Environment” by March 31, 2026.