The Crookston Public Schools District has many new faces joining its staff for the 2021-2022 school year. KROX will introduce you to the new teachers and assistants throughout the week. Below is an introduction to all of the new teachers and assistants at Highland Elementary School.
JACLYN HUBBARD
Jaclyn Hubbard is one of the new teachers that will be teaching 3rd Grade at Highland Elementary School. She is from Fosston and got her Elementary Education degree at the University of Minnesota. Some students may recognize her from the previous year because she spent the year being a student teacher at Highland. “I wanted to stick around the area, and Mr. Trostad came and approached me and said that he had some openings, so I applied, and I was lucky to get the job,” said Hubbard.
Hubbard says she’s excited to meet and learn more about the students and their parents to see who they are and start building connections at a young age.
KRIS MACGREGOR
Kris MacGregor is a new Counselor at Highland Elementary School that will be helping students individually with classwork in the school’s new Student Success Center. She is originally from Pipestone and graduated from Moorhead State University with a degree in School Psychology. She has since been working as a School Psychologist for 30 years, where she worked in various schools in Minnesota and North Dakota, such as in Fosston, Red Lake Falls, Oklee, and Palmer, and made the switch to School Counselor this year for the new position at Highland.
MacGregor says she’s excited to work in this new position as it’ll give her more interactions with the students than she had in her previous work as a School Psychologist. “I’m really excited to get to meet the students this year. In the past, I’ve been in many different schools, and I didn’t get to see students on a regular basis, so I’m really excited that I get to see those same, smiling faces every day,” said MacGregor.
SCOTT OLIVER 
Scott Oliver is the new Elementary Physical Education Teacher at Highland that came out of retirement after working as a Phys. Ed Teacher at Roseau and East Grand Forks Elementary Schools. Oliver grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, before moving to Crookston with his wife and Washington Elementary School Principal, Denise Oliver, in 1987, where he became the head hockey coach and football defensive coordinator for the University of Minnesota. Then for seven years, Oliver worked as a Phys Ed instructor in the Roseau School District for seven years before transferring to East Grand Forks for another 12 years.
Oliver retired in 2021 but soon found he was not ready to stop working with students. “I think that first year of retirement is hard to prepare for,” said Oliver, “I do miss working with the students and the daily interaction with students and fellow teachers and adults, so it was an easy choice for me to make when this opportunity came up to work at the Highland Elementary School.” Being back at work, Oliver is excited to be back in the school district and looks forward to interacting with the students and the outcomes of making positive relationships with the students he works with, saying, “Once a teacher, always a teacher.”
STEPHANIE TAPPE
Stephanie Tappe is the new Special Education Teacher for second-grade students at Highland Elementary School. She originally came from Missouri but moved to Crookston to be closer to family. During that time, she worked as one of the Paraprofessionals at Crookston High School while also working on her master’s degree in special education. With her taking the steps toward getting her master’s, Tappe felt that it was time for her to take on more responsibility in the school. “I wanted more responsibility. I wanted to be more involved in the process of the children’s lives in education. I wanted to make more of a difference than I could as a paraprofessional,” said Tappe.
Tappe is looking forward to making a difference in these students’ lives early on and helping to guide them all into the third grade.
AMANDA WOLF
Amanda Wolf is a new teacher at Highland Elementary School that will be teaching second grade. She’s originally from Fisher, where she graduated High School in 2012 and received her Elementary Education Degree from Minot State University in December 2020. After she received her degree and working at a school north of St. Cloud for the past year and a half, she and her husband moved back to the area and found the opening at Highland, saying she felt confident in her abilities and comfortable moving back due to there being a few teachers that had taught her in Elementary School teaching at Highland as well.
Wolf is looking forward to working in her own classroom for the first time and with a smaller class size of children eager to learn and looks forward to getting to know these children much better. “It’ll be nice to come in, to a quote-unquote, normal school year this coming year. We have a lot of fun things on our docket for our kids coming through, and we are looking forward to meeting everybody,” said Wolf.
GINA YSTENES
Gina Ystenes is a new teacher at Highland Elementary School that will be teaching first grade. Ystenes graduated from Fertile-Beltrami High School in 2007 and got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Minnesota State University Moorhead. Since then, Ystenes has taught for 12 years at a few elementary schools in West Fargo, such as Eastwood Elementary and Aurora Elementary. She was originally from West Fargo, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her family wanted to be closer, and they moved back to Fertile, where she eventually chose to take the job at Highland.
Ystenes is very excited to teach at Highland after she met many of them during the Back to Teachers Nights at the end of August and join the Highland team of teachers. “I met a few students yesterday, and they’re very excited to come back to school,” said Ystenes, “And I love their energy. I’m really excited to join the first-grade team and just to have a lot of fun in first grade.”
Stay tuned to KROX and KROXAM.com for more of the new teachers.
