B.C. teacher reprimanded for yelling at health workers at school COVID vaccine clinic

File photo of a young person getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

A teacher in the B.C. Interior has been reprimanded by the provincial regulator for yelling at health workers about his objections to a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at his school.

Patrick James Nelson signed a consent resolution agreement with the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation that was posted on Tuesday.

In it, he admitted to confronting the workers at a vaccine clinic in the cafeteria of the school where he works on Oct. 6, 2021. The clinic had been set up by School District No. 82 and Interior Health to vaccinate any students legally allowed to make the decision for themselves.

Nelson left the class he was teaching on their own to go to the cafeteria, “where he angrily interrupted and disrupted the vaccination clinic with students present,” according to the resolution.

“Nelson addressed health authority staff in a raised and angry voice.”

His comments included telling the health authority workers they were guests at his school and that they had “no legal right to immunize students without parental permission.”

He called the vaccines “experimental, dangerous, and poisonous” and said they shouldn’t be used, calling out the workers as “unethical in how they presented information on the vaccines and how they were offering the vaccines to students.” Nelson said the staff “should be ashamed of themselves.”

Nelson was angry enough in his tone that a school staffer called in administrators, and “some students were upset and had to be removed from the cafeteria” during the outburst.

When a nurse tried to calm him down, he walked up to her without a mask over his face, which was against the district’s COVID protocols, “and proceeded to yell and point his finger in the nurse’s face” with their faces only about 10 centimetres apart, far too close under physical distancing protocols.

Nelson was issued a letter of discipline and suspended without pay for just under two weeks in March 2022. He was also told to write a letter of apology to the health workers and to attend a meeting with affected students and staff. He had to complete several courses on maintaining professional boundaries and human relations.

As part of the consent resolution, he must also complete a course in conflict resolution by the end of this school year.

Nelson had been disciplined before when he swore in front of students during a moment of frustration in November 2019.

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