Meet the Faculty

Angela Yeager, a native of Lorain, Ohio, is the Director of Laurel's Environmental Justice Semester where she inspires, supports, and encourages the next generation of youth Changemakers. Angela received her education in sciences from The University of Miami and is a graduate of the Global Field Program at Miami University, Ohio, and has her teaching licensure from Cleveland State University. She continues to learn from the communities and ecosystems close to her. Her career in education incorporates the tools of activism as a Climate Reality Project Leader and member of many community organizations working for justice for the climate, society, and educational systems. Enthusiastic about hiking, SCUBA diving, family adventure travel, yoga, and immersing herself in the great outdoors, she finds inspiration in the healing power of nature and human connections. Angela resides in Lakewood on land that belongs to Kaskaskia and Erie peoples with her husband Chris and two children, actively engaging in sustainable living practices in a determined effort to “be the change.”

Josh Johnston graduated from Brown University in 2010 with his Masters of Arts in teaching, and earned his professional license in school leadership from the Center for Leadership and Educational Equity in 2018.  He served as a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher, an instructional coach, and the Director of the Middle Grades at The Learning Community Charter School, in Central Falls, Rhode Island for more than a decade.  His pedagogy is based on supporting students as they do the meaningful, authentic work that's relevant to them, and that means you'll often see him pulling alongside readers making significance of complex texts they chose to read, writers publishing pieces to public audiences they chose to write, and thinkers working to understand the complexity of the world, and how they will choose to live in it.   Laurel is a found home for him and his family - his wife, Abby, teaches history in the upper school, and his two daughters are thriving in kindergarten and preschool.  If you ask him where his happy place is, his head would say a hammock surrounded by trees with a thousand page fantasy book and a strong cup of coffee, but his heart would tell you it's being treated as a jungle gym by his six-year-old and his three-year-old.