B.C. teacher suspended after showing gory video in high school metalwork class

Students in a welding class work on skills and building a cattle trailer at Glenn High School, Dec. 18, 2025. Leander is one school district that measures success through a community-based accountability system, which includes students achievement in industry based education as well as other, more common metrics like STAAR test scores. (Sara Diggins/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)

A high school metalwork teacher in Chilliwack, B.C., has been suspended for two days after playing his class a gruesome video of a person being fatally injured.

The B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation posted a summary of its disciplinary action against Bradley Jonathan Bootsma on Jan. 20, nearly two years after the incident took place.

The summary explains that in February 2024, Bootsma was teaching his Metalwork 11/12 class about lathe safety.

A lathe is a machine that shapes material by spinning it while a cutting tool removes material, and the summary notes that the school’s metalworking shop has two.

According to the document, Bootsma warned his students he was going to show a video “where a person reaches over a lathe and is sucked in and dies.” He then gave them a chance to “look away or step outside the shop” before hitting play.

The summary notes the 52-second clip had no audio, and that Bootsma had found it on the internet.

Five months later, the district issued a letter of discipline and Bootsma was suspended for two days with no pay, which he served on June 26 and 27, 2024.

He was also required to meet with his school administrator for help “ensuring he is sourcing appropriate learning resources.”

The commissioner says three factors were considered before a consent resolution agreement was proposed on Jan. 3, 2025.

Those include his failure to “create a safe learning environment,” the steps he’d taken to guarantee his teaching materials “are appropriate going forward” and the fact that he had only been a teacher since 2019.

Bootsma signed the agreement late last year, and it was certified by the commissioner on Jan. 6.