With their former teachers retiring, Old Colony grads return to instruct

ROCHESTER — The smell of the room hasn’t changed at all to Colby Robertson. The machine shop at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, where Robertson in the late 2000s learned the trade of making parts out of raw material, had a particular scent.

Returning to his alma mater as a teacher over a decade later, the shop smelled the same to Robertson. He was back at school again.

“You walk in and the smell hits you, and it takes you right back,” Robertson said. “It’s like you never left. It’s like 15 years ago. It just hits again.”

Robertson, Lindsey Bernier and Kyle Valentim are three Old Colony graduates who have come back to the school in 2024 to teach the very machine and tool technology program they studied, in the same shop where they learned. The three completely new teachers replaced retiring instructors Ralph Blackburn, Mike Ferriera and Fran Mello.

“It’s really cool to think about,” Robertson said. “It’s pretty surreal. It feels like it was meant to be this way. It feels good to be a part of this school, because I remember I really loved my time here. I had a lot of fun.”

Valentim, of Acushnet graduated in 2008, and Bernier, of Acushnet, graduated in 2012. Robertson, of Carver, graduated in 2010 and thus learned in shop as a student together with both Valentim and Bernier. Each left industry and entered teaching for the first time this year.

All three were taught by Ferriera and Mello as machine shop students. Valentim, in fact, was a freshman when Ferriera and Mello first began at Old Colony in 2004, he said.

Now he was back stepping into one of their positions to teach the vocational program.

“I think it says a lot about the previous instructors and the school as a whole,” Valentim said.

Bernier previously worked in the medical device industry and at her family’s business building custom drive shafts and doing custom machine work. She said she had always thought about teaching.

“I think it’s really rewarding to help the next generation out,” Bernier said.

Robertson too said he always had the idea to teach. Through having children and coaching basketball, Robertson had experienced how nice it was “to see kids figure things out.”

“You teach them something, and they don’t quite get it, but you keep teaching them and then one day it just clicks and they understand,” he said. “That feeling is nice, when they finally figure something out.”

Robertson, Bernier and Valentim are all brand new to teaching as they begin their first year as instructors, not students, in the Old Colony building and shop room.

“Having the other two teachers as a support system has been incredible,” Robertson said. “The three of us being able to do this all together has been great. It’s really fun.”

There’s a “hustle and bustle” of deadlines and pressure in industry that teaching doesn’t have, Valentim said, while Bernier said instructing is more about “quality over quantity.” 

“You don’t truly know anything until you can teach it, so it’s a different change of pace,” Valentim said. “It’s been a little weird getting used to teaching, because it’s a completely different animal.”

The new instructors have sought guidance from their former teachers, whose retirements precipitated the three graduates to return to Old Colony.

Valentim said he’ll give one of them a call when questions arise — like where items are kept or refreshers on a process or a project. 

Robertson said he’s tried to follow Ferriera’s teaching style of keeping things fun and light while maintaining the importance of machining.

“There’s a million avenues you can take from this shop out of school, so that’s just what I try to get across to the kids,” Robertson said. “There’s endless opportunities in machining.”

As much as things have changed at Old Colony since the new teachers last attended the school as students, things have remained the same too, according to Bernier.

The atmosphere at Old Colony hasn’t changed, Valentim said.

“It’s still that small town school feel,” he said.

Robertson said the three “made it completely full circle,” having started in the same place as the very kids they now teach are starting.

“Just walking through the hallways again just as an instructor rather than a student, it’s weird,” he said. “It’s been a little bizarre, but it’s fun. You get to look in all the cabinets that you never got to look in when you were a student.”

The three Old Colony alums are back in the machine and tool program again, the learners now becoming the teachers, with that same shop smell still transporting them years back.