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After 37 years of teaching, Cape Hatteras Elementary School fourth grade math teacher Wayne Hooper will retire August 1.

He taught in Florida for 11 years and returned to Hatteras Island to teach more than a generation of students at Cape Hatteras Elementary.

On Thursday, May 25, 2023, smiling students surprised Hooper with a great thank you moment in Cape Hatteras Secondary School’s large atrium, complete with signs and loud applause.

One sign said “Mr. Hooper is the best … Mr. Hooper is … great, good, amazing, awesome and funny.”

Another, with all sorts of squiggles, said “We’ll miss you Mr. Coffee Man.”

And as testimony to Hooper’s teaching skills, a sign read “I learned so much from you!”

He has a legendary reputation for kickball games and timed multiplication quizzes, wrote one former student on Facebook.

The event was truly a surprise for Hooper, who walked out of a conference room and saw Cape Hatteras Secondary students lining the hallway and filling the atrium. He walked down the short hallway and into the large, smiling crowd of students from sixth through 12th grades and received lots of hugs and loud applause.

Students smiled at this favorite teacher. His family was present. His son Silas Hooper is a lineman for Cape Hatteras Electric. He brought some other linemen with him. Wayne’s mother Rita Hooper, his wife Jennifer Hooper and Silas’ wife Anna were present.

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