Substitute teacher has online hobby

By Jackson Feldwick-Jones,
BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Substitute teacher Richard Bruce is well-known for singing to his students, but he also has a strong internet presence which he has maintained for several years. His Youtube channel (richleebruce) and personal website (richleebruce.com) contain a wide variety of content like fish tanks, economics and biology.

He makes videos and writes webpages “to present my original ideas and information I have collected from various sources,” Bruce said. He has not made many videos lately, but is instead focusing on his webpages.

Despite being independent, some of Bruce’s content has gained notable traction. For example, if “AM radio reception” is googled, an article written by Bruce in 2009 is the 5th item to come up.

As well as that, the local Fox News Station and CBS program “The Doctors” requested to use his video about turkeys in downtown Davis.

His most popular videos and webpages are about low electricity aquarium maintenance.

“Aquariums often take a lot of electricity and therefore have a high carbon footprint. I am trying to reinvent the hobby on a more ecological basis by keeping fish with little or no electricity,” Bruce said.

His favorite videos he has made are parodies of pre-1922 songs. The lyrics usually are about Davis High School.

“The point of the songs is not so much to show my own limited talent, but to demonstrate what the students can do,” Bruce said.

Bruce thinks his videos help him gain a bit of credibility with the students.

“This generation is a generation of the Internet and I am definitely a man of the Internet,” Bruce said.