B.C. teacher suspended after relentlessly pursuing friendship with student
Credit to Author: Scott Brown| Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:51:56 +0000
A B.C. teacher has had her teacher’s licence suspended for two months and has been ordered to a complete on course on professional boundaries after engaging in inappropriate conduct with a high school student.
According to a B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation ruling released Tuesday, Chelsea Dawn Cromarty, a teacher in the Fraser-Cascade school district, sought to continue a relationship with a graduating student after the student communicated they were not interested in a relationship with her.
Cromarty, who has been a teacher since 2011, began to communicate with the student last May in a series of Facebook and Instagram messages that were not school-related and grew increasingly personal.
In one incident during school hours, Cromarty disclosed personal information about herself, including details about her marriage, during a one-hour talk with the student in a separate room outside of class.
On June 19, Cromarty drove to the student’s home and took the student for a ride. During the drive, she expressed a desire to be friends with the student following graduation.
According to the agreed statement of facts, the student felt uncomfortable with Cromarty’s attention and stopped responding to her texts.
A few weeks later, Cromarty called the student on the phone and said she felt sad and upset that the student didn’t want to be her friend.
During the call, Cromarty was told again that the student did not want to be friends.
Cromarty later wrote the student a three-page letter which again expressed her desire for friendship and how she was going through a challenging time in her life.
A month later she sent the student a message stating she was “incredibly drunk” and “sad about the way things ended.” She sent a photo of herself with her tongue sticking out with mouse ears and whiskers drawn on her face and a heart on her nose.
Cromarty, who continued to look at the student’s Facebook page despite telling the student she would “delete/block” them, reached out to the student again in November with a personal message.
“I just wanted to check if things have changed,” she wrote. “I get the sense that here is no way for me to rectify my past actions.”
Cromarty was reprimanded by the school district last December and ordered to complete a boundaries workshop offered by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.
Along with a two-month suspension for engaging in professional misconduct, the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation also ordered Cromarty to complete a second professional boundaries course through the Justice Institute of British Columbia.