Who is Creating The Yew School?
Head of School and Humanities Teacher Zach Drennan brings experience as a teacher, entrepreneur, executive director, father, and priest to his efforts to co-create The Yew School. This school is a chance to put into practice many of the ideas put forth in his Harvard divinity school master’s thesis “Fostering the Conditions for Spiritual Growth in Secondary Schools” about creating a outdoors-focused school in the Appalachian region. In his concluding remarks he states this school “…welcomes and embraces the heart and soul of adolescence. This essence is centered on finding our place in the world and answering the larger questions of life.
STEM Teacher Shane Groves has been a high school math teacher in Nicholas, Summers, and Kanawha Counties. He has also traveled the world as a kayaker and a math teacher for a kayaking school. He brings great enthusiasm for learning and the outdoors to his role as our science, technology. engineering, and math (STEM) teacher.
Dean of Students Margaret Worth was present for the first meetings about starting this school in 2011. She is a former elementary teacher with deep involvement in our community. She raised her grown children here, served on the school board, volunteered as an AmeriCorps member at the Pocahontas County Opera House. She co-taught an experimental outdoor preschool for neighborhood children at the Yew Mountain Center. She has an abiding commitment to making education work for every child.
Dean of Academics and director of the Yew Mountain Center Erica Marks is a career educator with experience in a diversity of school settings in WV and abroad. She assembled a team that includes graduates of Pocahontas County School, former and current teachers, former school board member, a retired WV principal, and local parents to collaborate on the successful proposal to the Walton Family Foundation’s Innovative Schools Project that is supplying the funding for the pilot year of The Yew School.
STEM Teacher Shane Groves has been a high school math teacher in Nicholas, Summers, and Kanawha Counties. He has also traveled the world as a kayaker and a math teacher for a kayaking school. He brings great enthusiasm for learning and the outdoors to his role as our science, technology. engineering, and math (STEM) teacher.
Dean of Students Margaret Worth was present for the first meetings about starting this school in 2011. She is a former elementary teacher with deep involvement in our community. She raised her grown children here, served on the school board, volunteered as an AmeriCorps member at the Pocahontas County Opera House. She co-taught an experimental outdoor preschool for neighborhood children at the Yew Mountain Center. She has an abiding commitment to making education work for every child.
Dean of Academics and director of the Yew Mountain Center Erica Marks is a career educator with experience in a diversity of school settings in WV and abroad. She assembled a team that includes graduates of Pocahontas County School, former and current teachers, former school board member, a retired WV principal, and local parents to collaborate on the successful proposal to the Walton Family Foundation’s Innovative Schools Project that is supplying the funding for the pilot year of The Yew School.
Erica Marks, Zach Drennan, Margaret Worth, Shane Groves
