MS Humanities Teacher Instills Passion

When hunger meets passion and dedication, it`s a powerful convergence. So, consider Yolanda Polk`s Middle School humanities classes a sight to behold. The students yearn for knowledge while Polk provides the unrelenting passion. She brings close to 15 years of educational expertise to the classroom, having worked in some of the area`s finest schools, and still exudes an excitement you`d expect of a new teacher on the brink of their new career. Her energy is easy to understand when she explains that her students, almost innately, desire a depth to learning that most kids their age would find abnormal. "Their level of engagement and their level of ownership in the classroom contributes to our [the teachers] opportunity to take them to higher levels in terms of critical analysis," she says. As chair of Middle School humanities, she`s then eager to take her students as far as they can go. And that`s often where students realize that sometimes-fragmented school subjects are a lot more interconnected than they thought. In her humanities classes, Polk intertwines literature and history. "Anytime you can help kids make connections between what they`re learning in different content areas, it becomes more meaningful to them," Polk says. So, daily, she leads her students to enlightening locales, where roads of fiction and non-fiction intersect with history`s path. She leads them to think critically and autonomously. She leads them to question, to explore. Like adding fuel to a fire.