Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

For Brittany Poole, being the sports science teacher at THINC College and Career Academy is a dream come true.

Poole, who was recently named THINC’s teacher of the year, used her sports medicine background to provide rehab to high school teams.

“Through rehab and getting to work one-on-one with students, we would spend some time studying,” Poole said. “While they were doing their exercises, I would drill them on their anatomy, biology homework or whatever they had. They would come back to me saying, ‘Mrs. Poole, I passed my test!’ and it was so exciting for me — I helped them do that.”

Following that experience, Poole decided to try her hand at teaching as a substitute teacher. 

“I worked at the elementary schools and middle schools, but when I substitute taught at high schools, it was really fun,” Poole said. “I love this age of kids and being able to talk to them and joke around with them.”

Through the Georgia Teacher Academy of Preparation and Pedagogy (GATAPP) program, Poole got her official start as a teacher at Lone Cane Middle School.

GATAPP is an alternative certification program for individuals who desire to become educators and already have an existing degree in a field other than education.

“Long Cane hired me, trusted me and developed me into everything that I am today,” Poole said. “When THINC called and said, ‘We have sports medicine, do you want to teach that?’ I said absolutely.”

Poole said she’s really enjoying teaching a subject related to her degree to high schoolers.

“The excitement that they get when somebody makes a connection because I helped them is so fun,” Poole said.

In a career still young, Poole said one of the most impactful parts of teaching has been watching her students grow up.

“The first students I ever taught in seventh-grade life science are seniors this year,” Poole said. “Just seeing them all grow up, graduating, where they’re going, what they’re doing and knowing that I had the tiniest little part in that, is special.”

Poole said if she wasn’t a teacher, she would have gone back to school for physical therapy.

“I like the body and knowing how it works and how to make it better when it’s hurt,” Poole said. “Sports medicine is different because when people get hurt, they want to get better because they want to get back to their sport. With other kinds of medicine, it’s not always that way.”

When Poole is not teaching her students innovative ways of viewing sports medicine, she can be found traveling with her husband, Michael, and their two children — Scarlett and Walker. She loves books and is an avid gamer.