BC teacher suspended for showing video ‘riddled’ with sexual connotations

A BC teacher who played a video “riddled” with sexual connotations to a Grade 9 class, belittled a teaching assistant and told students they needed to be able to take a joke, has been suspended for a day.

According to a March 24 BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation decision, Margaret Rose Lewick was teaching a Grade 8 and 9 art class when the first incident took place.

During the art class, Lewick took a cutting tool from an Indigenous student.

The student asked, “Is this because I am brown?” and Lewick replied sarcastically, “Yes, exactly.”

Students began discussing the racist nature of Lewick’s comment, and she got angry and upset, and responded by saying they couldn’t take a joke.

She followed with saying: “I have the right to joke about anything I want,” and “It’s a joke, people need to be able to take a joke,” along with, “I have heard these comments about being brown for years.”

Students reported feeling “shocked and surprised” by the teacher’s comments.

After class, the teacher attempted to apologize to the student, who reiterated that the joke was racist. Lewick replied, “The whole class heard you accuse me of being racist.”

The school district suspended Lewick for three days due to the incident. 

“Lewick did not create a positive classroom environment,” the regulator says in the decision.

Despite her previous suspension, Lewick’s issues continued.

In November 2024, Lewick was found to have shown her students two inappropriate videos.

One about eating pie was full of sexual connotations.

“Lewick turned off the Pie Video after a few minutes when a male eating a meat pie appeared on a beach wearing a small Speedo bathing suit,” the decision reads.

The next video was animated and showed students in a shop class.

“The shop video uses gender stereotypes, with weak males being referred to as ‘pussies.’ It also shows a mean, aggressive teacher torturing students through electric shocks. Lewick told the School principal that she liked to show students the shop video in order to encourage them to take notes,” the decision reads.

The school district sent Lewick an email stating that curricular materials “especially videos” need to be thoroughly vetted for content first.

The teacher’s issues continued when in December 2023, she spoke to an education assistant in a demeaning and disrespectful way.

She was later issued a letter of discipline and given a five-day unpaid suspension.

The decision says the school district had previously issued Lewick a letter of discipline in 2023 and told her to continue her counselling sessions and to take an alternative anger management program.

A year earlier, she’d made unnecessary physical contact with a student and had been told by the school district that teachers are held to a higher standard of conduct in and out of the school system. 

The teaching regulator issued a one-day suspension and ordered Lewick to take a Communicating in Conflict course.

“Lewick was previously warned regarding similar conduct on more than one occasion,” the Commissioner said in the decision.