Who is Creating The Yew School?
The idea of a “one-room schoolhouse” experiential outdoors-focused middle school in Pocahontas County goes back at least a decade, but the concerted, collaborative effort to make it a reality on the Yew Mountain Center property began in early January 2020.
The current steering committee for The Yew School includes Margaret Worth, Adrienne Cedarleaf, Michelle Jeffers, Zachary Drennan, and Erica Marks.
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.
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.
Erica Marks is a career educator with experience in a diversity of school settings and the director of the Yew Mountain Center. 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 a proposal to the Walton Family Foundation’s Innovative Schools Project. Their proposal was awarded funding in June 2020, but due to the challenges of the pandemic, the school opening was deferred until August 2022.
We are in the process of recruiting teachers for the upcoming school year.
The current steering committee for The Yew School includes Margaret Worth, Adrienne Cedarleaf, Michelle Jeffers, Zachary Drennan, and Erica Marks.
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.
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.
Erica Marks is a career educator with experience in a diversity of school settings and the director of the Yew Mountain Center. 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 a proposal to the Walton Family Foundation’s Innovative Schools Project. Their proposal was awarded funding in June 2020, but due to the challenges of the pandemic, the school opening was deferred until August 2022.
We are in the process of recruiting teachers for the upcoming school year.
