Teacher fined for throwing marker at pupil

A Saskatchewan teacher found guilty of professional misconduct for hitting a Grade 9 student with a whiteboard marker has been ordered to pay $10,000 toward the costs of a months-long disciplinary process that cost the Saskatchewan Professional Teachers Regulatory Board (SPTRB) more than $54,000.

The incident at the heart of the matter happened in November 2015 when Michel Levesque was teaching an applied and practical arts class.

According to agreed upon facts presented to the regulatory board, a student was not listening to Levesque and had turned his back on the teacher. Levesque took a whiteboard marker and — depending on who is asked — “tossed” or “whipped” it at the misbehaving pupil. The marker fell short of its mark, instead hitting a female student on the forehead and leaving a welt.

Levesque told the regulatory board at a hearing in November 2016 that he immediately stopped class, apologized to the student and offered her a cold compress.

The student was upset by the incident, left class and texted her father, who picked her up from school. The student was driven to a police station, where she reported the incident. The student’s mother contacted the school administrator, the superintendent and other school officials about what had happened. The mother also filed an official complaint with the SPTRB, which had been formed eight months earlier, in July 2015, to oversee teacher certification and discipline in Saskatchewan.

Levesque was reprimanded by his school’s administration and the SPTRB began its first disciplinary hearing.

That board found Levesque guilty of professional misconduct which, under the Saskatchewan Registered Teachers Act, is defined in part as “conduct which is harmful to the best interest of pupils or affects the ability of a teacher to teach.”

In a written discipline decision issued last month, the disciplinary committee ordered a reprimand be placed in Levesque’s file and that he pay $10,000, which is roughly 20 per cent of the $54,289 it cost to investigate the complaint.

The cost was “needlessly high” because Levesque suggested the fairness of the investigation was an issue, the SPTRB noted in its decision.

More than a year ago, Levesque’s lawyer had requested that the complaint be dismissed “because of the inherent unfairness of the process.” That necessitated a conference call between the lawyer and members of the disciplinary committee.

Levesque is not actively teaching, according to the decision. The SPTRB did not disclose where Levesque was teaching at the time the incident occurred.