A B.C. teacher will have to take a course on systemic racism if she wants to keep her professional licence, according to a disciplinary decision published online this week.
Deborah Laurie Croft was teaching at an independent school in B.C. during the 2019/2020 school year when she was at the centre of two separate incidents involving Indigenous students that were at odds with truth and reconciliation.
They ultimately resulted in her being fired.
The first issue arose on Nov. 5, 2019, with a Grade 11 student who had Croft as their homeroom teacher.
According to a consent resolution agreement with the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, an Indigenous student, and their friend went to the class to check their phones before a scheduled study break.
Croft was required to attend a meeting at that time, so she needed the students to leave the class so she could lock up. She asked them to leave, according to the decision, but they did not.
“Croft became frustrated, shut the classroom blinds, and locked the door from the inside so that the other students could not enter,” according to the decision.
Croft then pulled at the student’s arm and grabbed their phone from their hands “in an attempt to force them to leave the room.”
The next incident was just a few months later, on Feb. 25, 2020, with a Grade 10 Indigenous student who was in Croft’s social studies class.
In this case, the student was being disruptive in class and noisily slammed a book shut, at least once, according to the decision.
Croft responded by asking the student to leave and, as they did, she took their book from them and used it to hit them in the “rear end.”
The student, in turn, “was visibly upset and reported feeling humiliated afterward,” reads the decision.
On June 9, 2020, Croft was fired by the school and the consent resolution agreement from the regulation branch followed two years later.
It lays out that Croft will have her teaching certificate suspended for two days, from March 30 to March 31, 2023 and she must take programming to address the issues that arose in the two incidents.
The course, Systemic Racism in Canada in Partnership with Dr. Carl James, is offered by the Canadian Race Relations Foundations and has four modules. Croft will have to complete them and submit the coursework included with them to the commissioner by an assigned date.
Ultimately, the commissioner for B.C. teachers said that Croft “failed to treat students with dignity and respect” and acted in a manner that was “inconsistent with an educator’s responsibility to contribute to truth, reconciliation and healing.”
While the school that Croft worked at was not listed, the agreement was signed in Chilliwack on March 2, 2023.