What is your name and department? My name is Kristine Pommerenke-Schnieder and I am a teacher in the social studies department

How long have you been teaching at North? This is the end of my 29th year so next year will be 30 years for me. My entire career here has been here in Niles North.

What made you want to become a teacher? I had fantastic teachers when I was growing up, particularly my history teachers and my French and Russian teachers. I had a French teacher who was from Romania and because it was a communist country at the time she had to learn Russian and so I started taking Russian at Glenbrook South High School in addition to French because she was just a fantastic teacher and that got me interested in all things global outside of the United States. Totally inspired me, got me to go study in the Soviet Union so I was a student junior year in college in Russia when it was the Soviet Union. They got me curious about the world.

How do you cope with the stress that comes from teaching? I try not to take myself seriously, I’m here for the students and I just want my students to enjoy learning and so I think now in my older years I really emphasize that learning should be fun and should be an adventure and that we’re on this adventure together.

What is your favorite part about teaching? Students and the relationships I have with my students.

What are your favorite hobbies to do? I like to run so I like to work out, I listen to a lot of podcasts when I run or when I walk so I go for a lot of walks around Skokie while listening to a variety of podcasts that are either politically related because I also teach AP government but then I also teach AP European History so I listen to a lot of History podcasts.

Do you have a favorite movie or show? If so, what is it? I got two up there right now still, I love everything on the BBC, but I do love the BBC version of War and Peace so Leo Tolstoy was the author and his book is extremely long it has about 1200 pages but the BBC TV series based on War and Peace is fantastic and so I would say that’s probably right up there.

If you were to give a new teacher some advice, what would it be? Just to enjoy your students and I think the challenge to so many teachers may start there careers in their 20’s, many of us started in a 20’s, is that many of them think they have to be perfect and that you have to know your content and that is so much pressure that you have to realize that you have to remember you’re teaching lessons, you’re teaching teenagers, so really enjoy your students and develop your relationships with them so they can see that learning should be fun.

What is your favorite food? I would have to say Lou Malnati’s spinach pizza.

What is your biggest pet peeve? This time of the year, I think my biggest pet peeve are students who are realizing that it’s the end of the year and now it’s all about how to improve their grade so they’re really all about getting the points and not about the learning so what can I do to round their grade up, what can I do to get that , so it’s the process is more important to me than the points. So I really do wish students would focus on enjoying the learning and not the grade grubbing.