Making His Choice: Auto Tech Teacher Chooses Passion Over Profit

Making His Choice

Auto Tech Teacher Chooses Passion Over Profit

Each year, Brian Gay stands in front of his automotive technology class at the beginning of each semester and tells them that he’s still not sure he wants to teach. Even after eight years.

He talks about a red Snap-On mechanic’s toolbox the size of two fridges that sits inside his garage at home, stuffed with wrenches, lug nuts and electromagnetic readers. The toolbox is all Gay would need to land a job. It’s ready at any moment to be wheeled into a shop of his choice.

“Job security,” Gay calls it.

Eight years ago, Gay left a master technician job that paid six figures at Baron BMW in favor of a teaching job at a community college that paid a third of his old salary.

“It was boring,” Gay said. “Every day I would show up to the shop, line up the set of tools I would need to finish a job, imagine how I was going to do it, and then eight hours later I would be driving home to my wife. I wanted more excitement. Every day is something different with students.”

In the corner of Room 101, next to the lift propping his atomic-yellow Porsche race car six feet above the shop floor, he keeps five wooden desks littered with engine parts ranging from superchargers to turbos to spare seized pistons. Car magazines sit neatly stacked near a window, with diagrams of a Ford electrical unit on the walls. Pictures of his favorite race cars litter the walls of the room. A red line of tape divides the class from the shop.

Across the line sit the kids that keep Brian Gay teaching at East.

“I never know what to expect from these kids. I’ve gotten to meet some of the coolest kids ever. At my old job, I knew exactly what I would do when working on a car. Now, when teaching in a classroom I get to see all different types of responses and ideas about cars.”

Now, Gay finds his home in the basement at East, surrounded by a variety of cars ranging from a white Porsche 991 GT3 donned in red and blue racing stripes to his very own Volkswagen Microbus. He teaches four auto classes, ranging from the basics of entry level auto essentials to Auto 4, a senior-only class where students work on actual race cars in order to gain experience in the automotive field.

To sophomore Ian Armstrong, auto is the equivalent of an after school club more than an elective. He often spends extra afternoons propped up under the GT3, listening to Gay explain another part of the complex race car. His low, calm voice cuts through the cacophony of music and equipment in the shop, providing Armstrong with tips and laughing over inside jokes as they work together, side by side.

“I’m pretty into cars,” said Ian Armstrong, “In auto, I can work on my car on an actual lift and use professional tools, too. Not to mention the fact I can also learn and talk about cars all hour, it truly is a bright spot in my day.”

And for Gay, it is this impact that matters the most. It took him a few years, but he has come to the understanding that making a difference in young students’ lives is more valuable than any six-figure job in an automotive shop.

“My wife basically told me how much of an idiot I was for not realizing that I spent all this time in the business field and didn’t even realize that I wanted to be a mechanic,” said Gay. “Thankfully it worked out for me in the long run.”