We are in our 7^th year of operation. We are a true cooperative where the individual benefits from the group. We excel at offering fast, responsive customer service and, since we are all about the teacher, we strive to our clients the service that we would want to receive ourselves.

We offer quality teacher t-shirts (and now also masks in the current climate) that are fun, thought-provoking and comfortable…all while being less than $20 (masks are $10 each). After all if we wouldn’t pay that much for a shirt, why on earth would we sell shirts at that price? Other places will sell a lower quality shirt, heat pressed vinyl at ridiculous prices and we just are not about that. We also have hands on educational games that are created by TEACHERS, not publishers, for use in their own classrooms. This filters down to our downloadable educational resources, which our teacher contributors make for use in their own classrooms and sell on their storefronts via the ampeduplearning.com website.

Our target audience is every Early Childhood to College Educators looking for quality teacher created resources and fun, affordable apparel made by teachers who are STILL in the classroom.

The journey was a definitely a rollercoaster with LOTS of leaning along the way. Had I known where I would be in 2021, I probably would have taken some basic business and coding classes in college. It all started with Mat and I trying to figure out how to keep our students engaged when learning the history content needed to pass a state standardized test. We created a game on index cards which, two years later, became a product.

We dubbed this FRECK! We found we were training teachers all over Texas on how to use this effective teaching aid in their classrooms. Our FRECK! resource evolved and adapted based on our needs and teacher feedback. We took FRECK! to a history conference.

On a whim, we decided to design and print 5 t-shirts to sell, because we were never satisfied with the t-shirts for history teachers. Those shirts were a bit hit at the conference and we became known as the “t-shirt guys”.

We continued to grow and branched out to recruiting history teachers to sell their resources with us. Yes, there is another big company out there that sells teacher lessons…BUT they don’t allow teachers to sell their hard goods AND they charge teachers a yearly fee AND they don’t have great rewards for customers. We wanted to stand out, so we charge teacher sellers NO FEES, they can sell their created hard goods and we have an amazing reward system for our customers. As we grew, we decided to branch out to offer lessons in all content areas. This led us to where we are today.

I think the biggest takeaway is to just go for it, it doesn’t have to be perfect when you start…you just need to start, be prepared for criticism, be able to adapt and change and enjoy the ride.

It has definitely affected our hard good products. FRECK! sales declined a bit, but it allowed us to pivot, as Mat had the great idea to start selling masks targeted at teachers that would have fun, inspirational messages and images, AND They would be comfortable and provide the necessary safety. Again, something we would be proud to wear ourselves. So, the masks took off and we also focused on digital downloadable lessons.

Several things. First and foremost, we are 100% teacher owned and operated. We go the extra mile for our customers…because our customers are teachers just like ourselves.

Unlike our competitors we are able to make it possible for our teacher contributors to sell their hard goods. We don’t charge our teacher contributors ANYTHING and they still earn 80% commission on all their digital sales. During our sale promotions we even go further, and they earn 90%.

For our customers, our Amped Up Loyalty program is something that our competitors do not offer. When a customer creates an Amped Up account, they earn 200 Amped Up points immediately. Every purchase they make earns them a further 5% back in Amped Up Points AND each time they submit a review of a product that they have used, they earn 20% back in store credit.  Our competitors don’t even come close.

We are also very “new teacher seller” friendly, the other big teacher site out there favors their more established sellers by featuring their products at the top of search results in social media and more, but we do not do that. We treat all of our teacher sellers as the rock-stars that they are, and EVERY resource gets pinned personally by myself to our Amped Up Learning Pinterest board.

No, our audience is any teacher anywhere in the world. We have teacher sellers from North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Australia, and they have resources designed specifically for those teachers.

FRECK! came about because Mat and I were struggling with keeping students engaged with the history curriculum. We had engaging lessons, simulations, station work, etc., but we wanted something more and we wanted to “gamify” the classroom. Mat and I always enjoyed the trivia games you might encounter at sports bars, and Mat had just played a game called “Smart Ass” that he really liked…so we spent a summer planning a game for our students.  We wanted to call it “F in History” but figured that might be pushing the envelope just a bit much, so it turned in FRECK! in History. It’s funny, catchy and something that teachers and students love to play.

FRECK! is best played with 4-6 students playing around the FRECK! deck.  One player starts as the reader and reads the clues for the first card while the other players try to be the first to shout out the correct answer. Players are engaged, having fun, strategizing how to play their action cards and forget they are playing an educational game.

For more details and complete instructions, click here.

FRECK! isn’t just a game. It’s a classroom resource that can be used every week. We include over a dozen “Freck”tivities that incorporate the cards and skills such as sequencing, comparing, finding cause/effect and more.

FRECK! is special because it is a competitive, educational game that students ASK to play. FRECK! is so fun because all the players are involved in the game, they are trying to answer a card about a specific person, event, place, etc., with clues being asked from broad to specific…and the first person to call out the right answer wins that card (but you can only answer once per card). The basic aim of a FRECK! game is to earn the most money. Some cards have a dollar value, and some cards are associated with an action, so if you win those cards you can steal other players cards, skip a player’s turn, block them when they try to steal your cards, etc.

Yes, many. We have what we call the “house rules”, but we encourage teachers to do what works best for their students.

There are ways to play with struggling students who might need more processing time, there are ways to play where the class works in groups, plays against the teacher and more.

Yes! Currently we have

• FRECK! for Early US History 1607-1877
• FRECK! Modern History 1877-Present
• FRECK! for Texas History
• FRECK! Jr (All of US History designed for 3^rd-5^th grade students, and
• FRECK! JR Bilingual.

We are in the process of working on a:

• FRECK! World History, and
• FRECK! for Science

NOTE: if any teachers are interested in being a FRECK! clue writer, we would love to hear from you!

We are more like a Family or a Team. Our contributors and customers are the lifeblood of Amped Up Learning. I love to hear how much teachers love using our FRECK! resources, wearing our shirts and using the teacher created resources. The same goes with our teacher contributors. They have trusted us with their time and energy it takes them to upload their resources, so we value that and love to give back to them. We have a teacher contributor group on social media where they are always collaborating on sales, promoting each other on social media and more. We help our teacher contributors grow their social media presence by doing giveaways on their social media pages for Amazon gift-cards, shirts, masks and more. We LOVE it when our teacher contributors are successful…after all when One of us Shine…we All shine.

The future for Amped Up Learning is continuing to grow the number of resources that we offer by inviting more contributors to join the team. We want to continue to design more apparel, expand FRECK! to more content areas and find MORE awesome teachers who have great ideas for educational products, because we love to help them get exposure for their ideas.