Cedar Crest Intermediate reveals universally themed classroom

Company founder Hope King and her husband, Wade, created the room using projectors, lighting and sound and will provide some education themselves on how to use the equipment.

Hope King began a career in education as an early childhood and elementary teacher in 2007, while Wade King began working as an elementary and middle school administrator in 2008.

Hope wanted to find a way to make her classes more interesting, where the students wanted to learn. So she started picking a lesson that she felt the students would not be that interested in and transformed her room into some type of fun theme that she would teach the unit based around.

She said the transformations to her classroom would take several days to get all the props made, with the help of her husband. In 2016, she decided to start ‘Get Your Teach On,’ to assist other schools experience a room transformation that all teachers can utilize to help teach hard-to-stick lesson plans.

“What kind of made me start this was, as a teacher, I was seeking opportunities and professional development to better myself as an educator and what I found is that I was going and learning somethings, but I wasn’t leaving feeling inspired or enthusiastic or excited or with more joy,” she said. “I was feeling overwhelmed the content and so we said, ‘Where is there a place where teachers can go and they can learn the content, but also be equally as inspired to want to go back and do it?’ We didn’t find it out there, so if something’s not out there, I think it’s a teacher mindset to create it. So that’s why we created ‘Get Your Teach On’ as a space for educators to to be able come and feel celebrated and encouraged, but also be able to get that learning in and take their teaching to the next level.”

Hope and her group will return to the school a few more times to help the teachers make plans on how to capture the students’ attention. They also wanted to give the teachers a way to have these themes that did not require them to have to decorate their rooms with things such as tarps. Another goal for using the theme was to show how the subject that they are learning can be applied to real life, as well as having a memorable class.

King also shared one of her favorite quotes about being an educator. “Be the teacher that made it to the dinner table,” meaning that the teacher’s lesson will be talked about by the students at home to their parents. By being that teacher, it shows that they are learning and enjoying the lesson that they learned that day.