A Minnesota high school is investigating reports that a substitute English teacher reenacted the murder of George Floyd, restraining a student during class, an email sent to parents and shared with The New York Times said.

The substitute teacher, who taught four classes of 10th- and 12th-grade English students on Monday at Woodbury High School, about eight miles southeast of St. Paul, will be barred from teaching in the district following the episode, the statement said. The teacher’s name and other personal information were not included in the school’s communications.

“This reported behavior is reprehensible,” the principal of Woodbury High School, Sarah Sorenson-Wagner, said in the email message. “I am embarrassed, and I am sorry this happened to our students.”

The substitute teacher, who told students he had been a police officer, told “sexist jokes” and made “racially harmful comments”; gave students “specific names of people he arrested”; and “put a student on the ground in front of the class” in an effort to re-enact the murder of George Floyd, the school said. He also said that “police brutality isn’t real,” according to the school.

Although the teacher spoke in detail about his police work, he had never served as a police officer with the Minnesota State Police Department, the school’s email message said.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Woodbury Police Department said that the teacher had no affiliation with Woodbury Public Safety. In its statement, the Police Department said, “We are disturbed by the preliminary information of what occurred.” The police said they were working closely with the school district and that they would “investigate this incident to the fullest extent, while showing compassion to the students impacted.”