A British Columbia teacher was reprimanded for telling international students they should go back to their country and for requiring a student with asthma to run without an inhaler.
A document said the incidents occurred during the 2023-24 school year while William Walter McCrae was working as a high school physical education teacher in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district. McCrae did not dispute the facts in the agreement.
In one incident, two international students from Spain arrived late to class and began warming up with weights with the boys’ group rather than with the girls’ group on stationary bikes. McCrae told them to move to the bikes but believed they were taking too long and being disruptive. He told the students they were “a guest in our country” and should “go back to Spain” if they could not abide by the rules.
When the students apologised the next day, McCrae said: “I appreciate your apology, but I don’t get paid to teach international students.”
In a second incident, a student with asthma told McCrae they could not run a relay race because their inhaler had run out. The agreement says the school did not have a record of the student having a medical condition, and McCrae believed the student was faking it to avoid running.
McCrae said “nice try” and told the student to do the best they could. The student had to sit on their knees and take deep breaths after running for about five minutes.
The school district suspended McCrae for three days without pay in October 2024 and required him to complete a training course titled Creating a Positive Learning Environment through the Justice Institute of B.C.
The agreement says concerns about McCrae’s conduct had been raised two other times by the school district, and a commissioner proposed an investigation and a consent resolution agreement in December 2024.
McCrae was formally reprimanded for failing to create an inclusive environment for international students and for failing to protect the physical and emotional safety of the student with asthma.
