Shirley Yaskin has been teaching Miami-Dade County high school boys and girls the principles of journalism and the importance of a free press for 30 years, spending the last 18 years at Palmetto Senior High School.

"I always wanted to be a teacher," she said in a recent interview. "In fact, when I make my students interview me I always tell the story of how I had my dolls sit around me when I was a little kid. I had my grade book and I used to talk to them. So, I guess I always wanted to be a teacher, but I toyed with the idea of being a journalist."

Yaskin, who resides just outside South Miami in Miami-Dade County with her architect husband Michael, came to South Florida from Springfield, Massachusetts when she was eight years old, attended Kinloch Park Elementary and Junior High Schools, then graduated Miami Senior High School. She went on to the University of Miami, where she majored in English and seriously considered pursuing a career as a newspaper reporter.

While at the UM, she landed a job working for Paul Brun, the irascible publisher of the old Miami Beach Reporter. The experience left her uncertain about jourznalism as a profession and served to push her into teaching.

"Probably, I felt safer going on to be a teacher," she reflected. "I was getting married at that time and back then, sometimes you had to carry your own photography equipment around and shoot your own pictures."

Yaskin chose the road of an educator, joining the Miami-Dade County School System as a teacher at Richmond Heights Middle School. Even there, the journalism flame burned brightly and she helped youngsters put out a mimeographed student newspaper.

After taking time off to give birth to two boys ­ one now 25 years old, the other 27 ­ Yaskin returned to teaching journalism at Ponce de Leon Junior High. In 1982, she moved to Palmetto Senior High, where she has been a stalwart in the school's journalism endeavors, serving as faculty advisor for the school newspaper, the yearbook and the school's television production facility.

Yaskin also is president of the Columbia Scholastic Press Advisors Association and travels the country conducting seminars on how to teach journalism and various issues of interest to high school journalism students, such as how to cover a story or how to write a feature. She's also the faculty sponsor for the Palmetto High chapter of Quill and Scroll, the national journalistic honorary society.

In order to keep up with all of her activities, Yaskin puts in a great number of hours at the school, arriving at 6:45 in the morning and often not leaving until after 9:00 pm.

"I spend a lot of time here (at school)," she said. "But, I guess that's my civic involvement."

Yaskin's reputation as a high school journalism teacher has caught the attention of the Independent Journalism Foundation, which selected her to go to Romania with a group of teachers the last two summers to teach journalism to high school youngsters in the former communist country and help them put out a newspaper based on democratic principles.

"We did such a good job that that we're out of a job because now they're doing it themselves, which was the idea to begin with," she said. "But, we may go back again this summer."

From that experience, Yaskin has written a screenplay that she has high hopes for developing into a motion picture.

"It was an incredible experience and I have written a screenplay," she said. "I have a couple of people nibbling at it and I have an agent that says it's saleable. Of course, that's my dream, that something will come out of this screenplay."

Recently, a former student, Jared Fisher, now attending Cornell University and listed as one of the school's most outstanding seniors, selected Yaskin as the secondary school teacher who made the most significant contribution to his education. Cornell has invited Yaskin to the New York campus later this month for a two-day visit and a dinner, a panel discussion and a convocation luncheon.

"Jared called me and said, 'What are you doing on May 23?'" Yaskin said. "I thought he wanted me to write a recommendation or do something for graduate school. When he told me what he really wanted, I was just astounded. It validates what I do and makes it all worthwhile. This is really special."