Magical Educators

Jacy Douglas & Tracey Jones

WHO ARE WE?

  1. Jacy Douglas
    Jacy Douglas
    Mrs. Douglas teaches seventh and eighth grade English language arts and reading at Parkside School. She earned a BA in communications and a MA in secondary education both from the University of Alabama.
  2. Tracey Jones
    Tracey Jones
    Mrs. Jones teaches seventh and eighth grade math at Parkside School. She earned a BS in secondary education with a double major in math and history from Athens State University

ABOUT US

We are co-workers at Parkside School, a title one school which is part of the Cullman County system in north central Alabama. Parkside is in a rural part of the county, serving approximately 350 students in kindergarten through eighth grades.  Seventy-eight percent of our students qualify for free or reduced lunches. We have wonderful students, families, and community support, but we do not have a budget for many "extras" like classroom decorations. 

We pride ourselves on our family-like atmosphere, where students know that they are loved and cared for while they are at school. We knew we wanted to make our classrooms inviting places for our students and create a cohesive look for our hallway. In 2016, we were inspired to create a Hogwarts-themed hallway for our seventh and eighth-grade students.  After some discussion and thought, we decided to theme our classrooms to resemble iconic areas of the Hogwarts castle, representing the houses of Hogwarts. 

Our project began in the spring and summer of 2017. We opened three fully themed classrooms for the 2017-18 school year. Following this transformation, we observed increased classroom participation, greater interest in reading for pleasure, and a dramatic decrease in behavior problems.  After the success in our classrooms, we chose to spread Hogwarts out into the hallway, creating an immersive experience for the students. We worked with a local artist, Aaron Sullivan, to create a mixture of murals and 3D elements, bringing the world of Hogwarts to life inside our school. We are still adding new things to our classrooms and the hallway as we find them!
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