35 years of mental abuse in the classroom

EDMONTON • A teacher found to have humiliated and belittled students for 35 years, leaving many in tears or in physical pain, lost her right to teach and was fined $32,500 Monday.

An Alberta Teachers’ Association conduct committee heard from 60 witnesses, including students as young as fifth graders, before ruling Friday against 65-year-old Frieda Anne Mennes.

Witnesses said her conduct was so hurtful, children developed physical symptoms of distress. Some complained of stomach aches, headaches and cried each school day morning.

The panel found Mennes guilty of eight unprofessional conduct charges covering a period back to 1981. The hearing went on for 23 days between March and November.

Mennes loses the right to be a member of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, a requirement for teaching. The association is also recommending the minister of education cancel her certification.

The case is an “ugly undercurrent of disdainful conduct to students,” Konni deGoeij, an ATA presenting officer, said at the hearing Friday. DeGoeij said teachers testified about “deprogramming” Mennes’s students the following year so they would feel less anxious in class and be willing to take more academic risks. Support staff who worked with Mennes said they went home in tears and lost sleep over what they witnessed but, as contract employees, felt powerless to complain about her, deGoeij said.

Students said Mennes changed her behaviour when other adults were in the room. They testified no one would believe them if they complained, deGoeij said. They said they felt belittled and humiliated, and were sometimes kept in from recess for weeks or months.

Witnesses said some children had stomach aches and headaches when they had to go to school, and one cried and refused to get out of the car every school day.

DeGoeij said children exposed to stressful environments can experience mental health problems years later.

Some students’ guardians testified their employers and professional regulatory bodies received spurious complaints about them after they had clashed with the teacher.

DeGoeij told the panel that failure to treat students equally based on their academic abilities is a “corruption of the role of educator.

“Sometimes, adults teach bullying behaviour to students by modelling it,” she said.

A Grasslands school division employee complained to the ATA about Mennes in 2016, which prompted a nearly year-long investigation.

Mennes spent most of her career in Bassano, 140 kilometres east of Calgary. In 2012, she was transferred to a school in nearby Brooks, where she taught until November 2016, when the complaint was filed and she went on paid leave.

On Friday, conduct committee chair Stephani Clements declared Mennes guilty on eight charges, including taking actions and making comments to students between 1981 and 2016 that failed to treat students with dignity and respect and treating students differently based on academic abilities.

Mennes was also found guilty of behaving unprofessionally toward Grasslands central office staff; making inaccurate and unprofessional statements about school and board administrators; refusing to address concerns from parents or grandparents; retaliating against students’ parents or grandparents; making false allegations against her principal; and sending inflammatory anonymous letters about colleagues to the district superintendent and board.

“I’m not at all the person that they have presented,” Mennes said Friday as she left the hearing.