Catherine Yackee – 9th and 12th Grade Social Science, AP Human Geography, and AP Psychology at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy High School – Chicago, IL
Catherine Yackee is a born and bred Chicagoan. Born and raised on the Southeast Side, Catherine attended George Washington High School. She then attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she majored in Psychology and History. After working for sixteen years as a Human Resources manager for a number of security firms, Catherine returned to school and earned a Master’s in Secondary Education with a focus on Social Sciences.
Catherine has been a teacher for Chicago Public Schools for the last 18 years — the last fourteen years were at Brooks College Prep (located on the Southside of Chicago in the Roseland area). She currently teaches AP Psychology and AP Human Geography. She also coaches the Brooks debate team and serves as the yearbook sponsor as well as the Senior Sponsor. She became a National Board Certified teacher in 2008 and was nominated for a Golden Apple by her peers in 2019 and 2021. She is excited to be joining this project because food and nutrition are big components of the AP Human Geography curriculum.
In her spare time, Catherine loves to read, travel, and work on crossword puzzles. She shares her home with her college-aged son and her devoted husband, Jack. Her goal in the next two years is to visit every Presidential Library in the United States (only Nixon and Johnson left!).