2024 Teacher of the Year

Story by Jim Leggett

Bill Foley, a seventh grade teacher at Brame Middle School, was recognized as Teacher of the Year Tuesday, 6/18, by the Kiwanis Club of Alexandria. 

Foley, a first-year teacher, is a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Navy. He was accompanied to the club’s meeting by his mother, Dorothy Cogburn, whom he said provided his love for education. 

He will teach seventh and eighth grades next year at Carter C. Raymond Middle School in Lecompte. 

His education includes bachelor’s degrees from LSU and Northwestern State University and a Master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma. 

He is part of a unique program which pairs a new teacher with no experience with a veteran teacher to impart life experience and knowledge to young students. 

He said that education has always been a first love in his life even as he spent most of it in nuclear propulsion and nursing, the latter of which is one of his college degrees. 

Foley was introduced by Mollie Fontenot, acting director of Middle, Middle Magnet and Montessori Schools, Rapides Parish School Board.