MELBOURNE, Fla. — In most classrooms, it's about putting pen to paper, but for one A+ Teacher, the hands-on experience is the driving force in classroom creativity.

On any given day you'll see eager students hard at work in Shannon Kraeling's advanced ceramics class at Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne.

Kraeling was nominated as an A+ Teacher. Her students say she has a way of encouraging them while also challenging them.

One of her students Tyana Randolph said, "I remember when I came into the class I had no clue to what we were doing. I was really struggling, but she gives really good instruction. She's just — she's amazing!"

Another student Ava Johns said, "She's so caring and she does everything she can ever do for us at any point whether it has something to do with ceramics or if she's helping us with something outside of class."

Kraeling didn't initially choose a career in teaching art. She worked as a substitute teacher at school as a speech pathologist until something different caught her eye.

"So every time I would go by the art room I was just excited to see what was going on, and I really knew at that point that's what I really wanted to teach,” she recalled.

Trained in drawing and painting Kraeling stumbled into ceramics when moving to Brevard County and seeing a job opening.

"So I kind of convinced my principal. I'm like, 'Hire me and I promise that I'll do everything that I can to learn this and make it the best program possible,'" she explained.

That was some two decades ago. Kraeling loves her job.

"It's so awesome to see the stuff that they're building — that they're creating," she said.

Students adore her class and her unique way of teaching.

"I'm very lucky because I am the class that they want to come to. Every day I have kids telling me that the only reason they came to school today was because their project was coming out of the firing, and they wanted to work on their projects,” Kraeling said.