A teacher who allegedly chugged booze and hurled curse words at students during a lesson that she interrupted to have them dance the Macarena has been fired.
Alice Ashton from the UK was swigging from a water bottle full of orange liquid which smelled of alcohol and blaring music from her laptop during the health class, one of her 16-year-old students told a hearing on Tuesday, reported the Telegraph.
She also called students “little s—ts” and “put her middle finger two to three inches” from another teen’s face during the “out of control” class at Ysgol Bro Caereinion school in Welshpool, Wales, in January last year.
The usually “reserved and quiet” teacher’s classes on alcohol and drug awareness were normally “boring,” a student told the hearing of the Education Workforce Council Wales panel.
But before the class, she was spotted swigging from a water bottle that had an “alcoholic smell,” the unidentified student told the hearing.
“She was very, very close to us. There was a slight alcoholic smell. She was very, very lively and quite animated and speaking with her hands. In other lessons, she was more reserved and quiet,” the student said, as reported by LBC.
“[She] asked the class to make the Macarena. She played music and we were not doing work,” the student said.
Ashton’s sloppy behavior came just four months after she had been convicted of drunk-driving, the fitness-to-practice hearing heard.
The “water” bottle Ashton had in her class was almost empty by the end of the class, the students said.
Ashton “kept jumping up from her desk” and was becoming “irritated” as the class went on, at point getting right in an unruly teen’s face, the student said.
Ashton denied that she had sung or sworn at students in an internal school review, but multiple witnesses came forward to describe the chaotic scene.
“She got some students dancing to the laptop and speakers and it spiraled out of control,” a second teenager said.
CCTV footage from the class that day corroborated the students’ stories, the panel said.
“It is totally untenable to suggest the music is being played as background music,” presenting officer Lewis Harris said, as reported by LBC.
“The evidence is very clear that Miss Ashton did not remain at the front of the class. She invited pupils to dance.”
Ashton was removed from the teaching register indefinitely, but may reapply in two years.
She did not appear at the hearing and showed no remorse for her actions, having not even responded to the findings, the disciplinary panel said.
Ashton emailed the panel only to say that she has since moved to England and no longer works as a teacher.
