A Porirua preschool teacher who lifted a child into the air by their arm and put them down roughly on a bed, locked one outside, trapped another in an upturned tunnel and threatened to punch a colleague has been found guilty of serious misconduct.
The case was heard at the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal in May, and its decision was released yesterday. It covered the teacher’s conduct between 2019 and July 2020.
Tracey Cianna Jane Brown was involved in a number of incidents which the tribunal described as a “relatively bad case of rough handling and poor behaviour management at an ECE Centre".
In July 2020, Brown was in the daycare’s sleep room with another teacher and at least three children who were in bed.
Brown became angry with one of the children, who didn’t want to go to sleep.
She raised her voice, telling him to go to sleep before throwing his toy dog across the room, telling the boy he couldn't have it.
“Child A tried to get up, and Ms Brown grabbed Child A by the forearm and lifted him up about 40 to 50 centimetres off the ground,” the decision reads.
“She then put him down forcefully on the bed.”
While crying out “in pain”, Brown told him he needed to go to sleep and “stop being silly”.
Brown acknowledged the incident happened but said she didn’t know the child’s arm got hurt.
'I want to slap you, but I'm not allowed to'
In another incident, Brown threatened to slap a child who wouldn’t go to sleep.
“He was giggling at Ms Brown, moving the blankets off himself, and trying to take his clothes off.”
Brown said she wanted to “slap him in the face but was not allowed to”, with the boy telling her to “shut up”.
The tribunal's decision mentioned a prior incident where the same boy was trapped in an “upright mobile tunnel". Brown told him he couldn’t come out until he calmed down.
“Ms Brown positioned the tunnel so that the opening was facing upwards, trapping Child D in there, as he was too small to climb out of the top.”
The child screamed while he was in the tunnel, and Brown let him out after five minutes.
In her response, Brown said she had put “multiple” children in the tunnel and “either put a ladder in the tunnel so they could climb out or she held onto their arms so they could use their feet to climb out".
She denied that the child ever cried out and described the act as “a game” rather than a form of punishment.
It was found that Brown acted aggressively towards children “from time to time”.
“She shouted at misbehaving children and yelled at them to go outside as a means of behaviour management.
“On those occasions, the children looked scared when Ms Brown raised her voice at them.”
One one occasion she chased a child outside, locking him out and asking him to “not come back inside”.
“She then slammed the door of the ranch slider shut behind him, locked the door and walked inside, away from him.”
It was also found that Brown grabbed a child by the wrist and “dragged him outside”.
It wasn’t just the children who were on the receiving end of Brown’s aggressive behaviour - her colleagues faced it as well.
Threatened to punch colleague
On one occasion, she threatened to punch another teacher “in the head” over a roster dispute.
Brown was “angry” at a colleague for how she prepared the roster. She threw the papers on the ground, refused to pick them up and walked away.
Brown later told her colleague she “had walked away from Ms Z earlier because she was going to punch her in the head".
Brown said the incident “did not happen” but accepted the “comment may have been made because of the frustration that she was feeling”.
The teacher accepted that shouting at children and staff was something she “could work on”.
She told the tribunal she “was struggling and felt like she had come to a brick wall as she had been asking for help with certain children’s behaviours that had become ‘quite hard’".
Following an investigation and hearing, it was found Brown had engaged in “serious misconduct”, and her teaching registration was cancelled. She was also censured and made to pay $3714 in legal fees.
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