Every year Oakdale Welcomes new students, but they aren’t the only addition at the beginning of the school year. At the start of the 2023-2024 school year, Oakdale High School welcomed a total of 19 new teachers, including Ms. Emma Piro in the math department. Piro revealed: “This is my first teaching job. I just graduated college in May. Before this I worked retail at Ulta Beauty.”
Piro seems to be pleased so far, “I love it here, it’s very small from the highschool I went to. It was like each grade had four times the amount of kids.”
She also mentioned that she planned to teach until very late in her life, “Until retirement there is a thing called teacher quit-tok and teachers on tik tok are talking about how they wanna quit and I hope that’s never me.”
Growing up she always wanted to become a teacher: “I have patience to watch kids learn more than I have patience for anything else.”
When it came to teaching, her high school trigonometry/calculus teacher was her main influence. She states: “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to teach or do physical therapy, but my previous teacher pushed me in the right direction to become a teacher, and I’m glad she did.” This year, she is teaching Advanced Algebra/Trigonometry and Geometry.
Piro graduated with her teaching degree from St. VIncent College in Latrobe, PA. From her experiences teaching so far, she prefers to teach at a high school level: “I love this age range, [some of my classes are] good because it has some tenth, but mainly eleventh and twelfth graders.”
When asked about her hobbies outside of teaching, she responded. “I like to read romance books. I really like Lucy Score and Colleen Hoover.” Some other hobbies included doing her makeup and social activities.“I like to hang out with my roommates. I have three other roommates. We were just at the beach over Labor day…. I like to go home and see my dog,” Piro mentioned.
When asked about her opinion on Piro as a teacher, Senior Ange Nganou stated, “I think she doesn’t have a lot of experience teaching, but she’s really nice and willing to help.”
Overall, Piro is a good teacher and students hope that she stays at Oakdale High for a long time, and that she enjoys her time here. So welcome to Oakdale, Ms. Piro!
