Anton Van Der Watt, a 66-year-old supply teacher, managed to speedrun a lifetime ban from the teaching profession after crashing and burning in spectacular fashion during his very first day at Brine Leas School in Cheshire.
Most substitute teachers struggle with the projector; Van Der Watt decided to audition for a cartoon villain role instead.
Instead of sticking to the lesson plan, Van Der Watt packed a career’s worth of HR violations into a single morning.
He targeted two Chinese students with the classic “Ching and Chong” routine and told an African pupil that, “back when he was younger, he wouldn’t be allowed in the classroom.” He then doubled down by explaining that people of colour used to be banned from buses and trains.
In an aggressive attempt to control the classroom, he threatened to “rip a student’s vocal cords out and feed them to the lions.” He also swung a chair over students’ heads, slammed desks with a ruler, and casually asked a child, “Do you want to go home on crutches? I will break your leg.”
To keep things organised, he kept a written register of students he decided “needed to be hit.” He also put his hands on students, pinching one’s neck hard enough to leave a mark and punching another on the shoulder.
Unsurprisingly, the students ratted him out immediately, and the school escorted him off the premises before lunchtime.
Van Der Watt skipped his Teaching Regulation Agency tribunal but sent his agency a classic “sorry you took it that way” email. He claimed he was just trying to demonstrate—”in a light-hearted manner”—how to use “relationships, trust, and humour” to defuse a tense situation. Because nothing builds trust and humour quite like threatening to feed a teenager’s internal organs to apex predators.
The panel was entirely unamused by his stand-up routine, ruling that his behaviour fell “significantly short” of standard teaching practices. He is now banned from setting foot in an English classroom indefinitely, with no chance to appeal until October 2029.
Brine Leas School hit the panic button with absolute textbook efficiency, proving that while they might not have expected a substitute teacher to go full Gladiator in period two, they certainly knew how to eject one.
Because the school looks after roughly 1,400 kids, the administration is used to dealing with standard teenage chaos—but not a 66-year-old man threatening to feed their pupils to safari animals.
