Bourgeois’ Passion Made Him the Teacher He Is Today

By Dan Langer

April 17th, 2023

Brooke Bourgeois is a first year high school teacher after spending the last twenty-one years teaching at Lisha Kill Middle School. He has a bubbly and outgoing personality and was more than delighted to let me sit down and interview him. He eagerly sat across from me and made himself comfortable as I questioned him.

Bourgeois began by telling me how he started working with his hands from a young age. He had saved up enough money to buy a Honda motorcycle, but his dad didn’t want him buying a bike. Instead, his dad offered to sell him his broken down Jeep for only $1. Bourgeois had always wanted to rebuild it with his dad, so they began working on it. “It was a labor of love,” he said. “You learn about something and you figure it out.” Once he got the Jeep running he never looked back, saying he loves to build things just for the challenge of it.

He later went on to buy many more cars eventually landing on a truck. A big Audi guy, he’s had three Audi A4s throughout his life. He absolutely loved those cars, saying they’re a lot of fun to drive and look cool. His life shifted and the Audi’s got too small for his family, but he and his wife would love to own another one. The thing he says he loves most about cars is the adventures they take you on. He reminisced on a time when he was younger and drove one of the A4’s to Mont-Tremblant in Quebec. He said he was about an hour north of Montreal, and all you could see were little townhouses, villages, and the winding road going through the beautiful mountains. He described the experience as surreal.

Bourgeois told me that as a teenager he had hopes of becoming an engineer. However, he liked talking to people and he didn’t want to wind up stuck behind a desk. A friend suggested that he should try teaching and he decided to give it a shot. He never planned on it being permanent, he was only going to try it out and see how he liked it. When he was still in high school, he really enjoyed his shop classes. This helped him to decide that he also wanted to be a shop teacher.

He went to Suny Oswego, alongside other Colonie teachers such as Mr. Kacey and Mr. Garis. He studied Technology Education, and began student teaching at Lisha Kill Middle School under Mr. Botta. Botta began working in the private sector, leaving Mr. Bourgeois as a temporary substitute teacher. He later applied for the position, got the job, and worked there for twenty one years. There he taught both 7th and 8th grade technology as well as STEM.

Currently, he says he’s building the curriculum for a course he hopes to introduce next school year: transportation. He told me he’s figuring out what projects to have the students complete as well as what materials and tools are required. As of now nothing is set in stone, but he plans to make the course a little more difficult than metal shop. “The requirements for the class will be a little more difficult, a little more stringent to get the A’s, but certainly something that will be achievable” He plans on including more engineering elements, as well as taking what’s been learnt in metal shop, such as welding and sheet metal work, and expanding on it more.

Teaching has also opened him up to new hobbies and opportunities he says. He has some extra free time now, and has the freedom to do the things he loves or to build things. A self proclaimed, “curious person,” he loves to learn how things work. He says he will dive down the rabbit hole, browsing YouTube videos or the internet to learn how something works. He’ll see one person doing something cool or creative, and will want to replicate it. “There are always new ways to do things, new programs to learn, new machines to try out, new processes to try, so that helps me to keep content fresh and keep it fun for the kids.”

Bourgeois’ passion for his job has reached the students of Colonie High School with them singing praise of him. Colonie senior Tanner Nixon said Bourgeois is a funny and amazing guy to talk to. His love for teaching extends to his students as fellow senior, Jenny Shafer, describes Bourgeois as “...the best, he’s so chill all the time and friendly like he makes connections with every student.”

Though new to the high school, Bourgeois has shown he’s a valuable part of the Colonie community. He’s a great person to talk to and an even better person to listen to, always having a story he’s open to sharing. He loves to share his advice and wisdom, especially when it’s about what to do after high school. If you’re ever looking for someone you can talk to, or even learn from, Brooke Bourgeois is your guy.