It’s no secret that the 2020-2021 school year is a special one. Students are only in school two days a week and for the remaining three they are at home remote learning due to the ongoing pandemic. However, things may be a bit more different for one teacher in particular: Mrs.Krasnow. Mrs.Krasnow has joined the Hampton staff this year and I recently had the chance to interview her to see just what it is like starting a new job during a pandemic.

First off, let’s get to know Mrs.Krasnow. Mrs.Krasnow is actually a native of the North Hills. “I went to North Allegheny High School” she told me at the beginning of our interview. She has received her bachelor’s degree in history from Allegheny College and got her masters in teaching from Pitt. However, she has not always been located in the North Hills, “I taught in Mt Lebanon school district at the high school for a couple years. Then I was in Pittsburgh Public Schools for about 2 years teaching middle school”. In fact, she still has not moved back to the North Hills, though she now works here, “I currently live in the city with my husband and we have a little Shih Tzu dog named Lacy”. To get to know Mrs.Krasnow a bit better, I asked her a question that couldn’t possibly have been asked until 2020. What did she do in quarantine? “I did a lot of reading. I watched a lot of reality tv, I’m not going to lie to you,” she said laughing at herself. “I got a lot of exercise, I went on super long walks and listened to podcasts.” With quarantine came lots of baking and cooking trends, so, of course, Mrs.krasnow said she also did a lot of cooking. 

Now, some may be wondering why Mrs.Krasnow is teaching World History in the first place. Well, it all started from a young age for her, “I would say I’ve always just loved history. I love reading about it, learning about it. Then when I was in high school I had a really really good AP History teacher who just really inspired me, and I just knew from then on, I wanna work with kids and be able to inspire them to love learning about history too.”  

Now, for the most important question, how is it getting a new job during a pandemic? “It’s really really nice to be able to get back in person working with you guys again, you know, we can’t do every lesson we want to the way we would want to, but we are back. But just getting to do more collaboration and having more structure again is kind of nice.” Though quarantine was a strange time in the world, it did give a bit of perspective to a lot of people like Mrs.Krasnow who said she feels like “during quarantine it helped, it helps you get an appreciation for getting up and going to school every morning.” 

Lastly, I asked Mrs.Krasnow if there was anything she was looking forward to this year. Her response was that she is just looking forward to getting to know all of her new students in her geography and world history classes. So, let’s all give Mrs.Krasnow a warm, but socially distanced, welcome to Hampton.