2 teachers transformed an old bus into a 1970s-inspired classroom-on-wheels for under $10,000

Jerilee Melo has taught preschool for the last five years and has been working with children for over 15 years.

Melo told Insider that before the coronavirus pandemic, she taught a class of 24 preschool students in Santa Clarita, California, with the help of an assistant.

As pandemic lockdowns started and she moved away from teaching in a brick-and-mortar classroom setting, some of the families of her former students reached out to her. They told her that their kids missed being in school and asked if she could tutor them.

"So, I was tutoring three families on separate days, but my car just eventually became a storage unit," Melo said. "I was bringing all my materials with me."

Her car was overflowing with "worksheets, crayons, markers, and puzzles" for her lessons to the point that, Melo said, it just made sense to buy a bus. It afforded her a bigger space that could comfortably hold all her teaching materials — and would eventually become her classroom.