Richmond Hill teacher fired for social media comments

York public school board will have no further comment

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 9, 2015

A Richmond Hill high school teacher linked to racist comments on social media has been fired.

Michael Marshall, a teacher and supervisor of a gay-straight alliance club and slam-poetry society at Richmond Green Secondary School, was dismissed after a York Region District School Board meeting this week, according to board spokesperson Licinio Miguelo.

The firing follows a 10-week investigation into racist comments critical of Islam that he allegedly posted online.

Miguelo said no one at the school or the board would comment further and Marshall could not be reached for comment.

Students at the school discovered a Twitter account, @firstatheist, with a profile picture of Marshall and numerous tweets mentioning pupils’ names along with 4,600 messages including “hijabs make me sad” and “I am way too racist to be a teacher”.

The account ceased activity June 25 and another account, @marshallisaboss, also linked to the teacher, became inactive around the same time.

Students said they identified their teacher from profile pictures, information in the biography matching a description of Marshall and a blog post on Weebly dated Aug. 25, 2014, in which the author self-identifies as a 30-year-old atheist teacher in Toronto who runs a Gay-Straight Alliance group.

At the time, Miguelo said, “there have been cases in the past where some of our employees have been impersonated.”

The board’s @YRDSB Twitter account said the board takes “concerns about racist tweets very seriously and are investigating.”

In 2010, a teacher at Woodbridge College named Mike Marshall was given an “Unsung Hero” award by the Educational Services Committee of District 16. Marshall was a teacher at the school at that time, where his score on the website ratemyteachers.com was an impressive 4.7 out of 5 stars.

More than 30 reviews on the site rate Marshall positively at Richmond Green, with students appearing to claim he is an “amazing teacher” who is “very understanding” and goes “that extra mile.” One review on the site from May 11 reads: “He is also very opinionated about controversial topics such as religion and often comes across as insensitive to others’ beliefs inappropriate for a classroom.”

Speaking to Torstar in June, school board co-ordinating superintendent Cecil Roach said he knew the teacher personally and the allegations would be “very disturbing,” if true, because “one of the lead poets in the slam group is a hijab-wearing girl.”

A female student, 17, who was taught by Marshall as part of the slam team, said she cannot recall a time Marshall was openly racist, but said “I remember him saying he argues with Muslim extremists on Twitter. ... They were little remarks, and I always thought he was joking, because I looked up to him as a teacher.”