Former Bobcat takes over Art Program

Before Ryan Cates began teaching at Krum ISD, he taught at Lewisville ISD. He has been teaching for eight years, with one of those years being at Krum Middle School, where he taught 7th grade history .

”Before that I taught US History at Killian Middle School for 3 years and Special Education at Sanger for 3 years,” he said.

Mr. Cates admits that his favorite subject to teach is Art rather than History.

Mr.Cates attended college at Texas Tech and The University of Texas at Arlington. While in college, he majored in Graphic Communications.

Although he considered going into software sales with his brother, Mr. Cates' wife led him into a teaching career.

“My wife was a teacher first and we wanted to have the same schedule,” Cates said.

Mr. Cates and his wife, Brooke, have two kids: Hudson age five, and Jolie who is eight months old.

When he’s not teaching, Mr. Cates enjoys building furniture, wake-surfing, travel and spending time with his family.

Cates grew up in Krum, and moved back because he wanted his son, Hudson, to start kindergarten in a smaller school closer to his grandparents.

While in high school, Mr. Cates was big in sports. He was in basketball, cross country, golf and track.

Mr. Cates enjoy teaching the students art, and said the hardest thing about teaching is engaging the students who have no desire to be at school.

Janet Castillo says. “He’s a chill teacher,He lets us take our time and we get to do things that are actually fun,” Janet Castillo said.