BC teacher who drank shot with student gets suspended

A BC teacher who drank a shot with a student as part of a Grade 12 graduation challenge has been suspended for a day.

According to a May 5 BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation decision, students turned up at high school teacher Jacqueline Rochelle Sheppet’s home with a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses.

The teenagers told Sheppet that they were participating in a Grade 12 challenge, and one of the tasks was to do a shot of vodka with a teacher.

Sheppet did a shot of a clear liquid, while the student did a shot of vodka, and another student streamed the footage on their phone.

The Vancouver area teacher suspected that the teens had been drinking and that they may have been drinking and driving. She asked the driver to breathe on her to see if he’d been drinking.

The decision said she didn’t attempt to contact the students’ parents or the police.

While Sheppet told the school principal about the students doing a challenge, she kept quiet about the drinking.

“Sheppet failed to role model appropriate behaviour or provide for the safety of students,” the Commissioner said in the decision.

Along with the vodka incident, Sheppet was also reprimanded for losing her temper with students.

The decision said that during the same school year in April 2023, she raised her voice and became “visibly irritated” when a Grade 11 student told her they had to leave class early and their parents were waiting for them.

“Sheppet told the student that they could not leave early, as they had to write an exam. This interaction lasted several minutes and caused the student to cry,” the decision reads. “The student stayed in the class and wrote the exam. The student was not crying while writing the exam.”

Two months later, she was involved in a similar incident when a Grade 11 student asked to reschedule an exam. The student had a note from their parents, but it didn’t give a reason why they needed to reschedule.

“Sheppet responded to the student that the student could not miss the final exam without an appropriate explanation. Sheppet spoke in a raised voice and an aggressive tone,” the decision reads.

The student headed to the school office, where Sheppet found them in tears, talking to a staff member.

She then spoke to the student with a “raised voice” and a “sharp tone.”

After speaking to the students’ parents later that day and finding out the reason for postponing the exam, Sheppet agreed.

The unnamed school later suspended Sheppet for five days and passed the file to the teaching regulator, which issued a further one-day suspension.

“Sheppet failed to treat students with dignity and respect,” the regulator said.

Sheppet, who has been teaching in BC since 2004, signed a consent agreement with the Commissioner admitting to her behaviour.

The teacher was also mandated to complete a Reinforcing Respectful Professional Boundaries course.

— This story was corrected at 11:25 a.m. Thursday, May 7, 2026, to say Sheppet took a shot of “clear liquid.” A previous version of this story said the teacher did a shot of vodka.