UFT Admin
- Retired teacher
Anna Krebushevski grew up on a farm in Poland, where she became a teacher as a young woman. She arrived in this country at 21 and began her teaching career here as a substitute teacher. She found her teaching home once she arrived at IS 51 on Staten Island. Anna was a dedicated and revered math teacher to her students, many of whom kept in touch for decades, and a mentor to newer teachers.
Anna taught math for 26 years, including all of the school’s honors classes, until her retirement in 2004. She died of a stroke on April 9, 2026, at age 87.
“Anna was devoted to her students, teaching them not just to pass a test but to really have a comprehension of their subject matter,” said her daughter, Joanne Crenshaw. “She was always thinking outside the box — ‘What lesson plan can I come up with to show them that what they were learning is a resource for an application in life.'”
“This wasn’t a job, this was her life,” Crenshaw said, recalling students who would stop her mother on the street, throw her birthday parties, invite her to their weddings and remain pen pals when they moved far away.
Anna’s chapter leader, Frank Marano, said, “Anna had a good rapport with her students, always had a good lesson going on, and it was always quiet when you walked into her classroom. She took her job very seriously and got along well with all her colleagues.” After she retired, she regularly attended all the union’s retirement lunches.
“God bless Anna, she helped me so wonderfully. She was my mentor when I started working at IS 51,” said her friend and coworker Diane Malejki, who credited her with easing Malejki’s transition from teaching in a Catholic school. “Working in a public school was a different world. Any problems I had in teaching math, we would talk about, and she was excellent; she would suggest other ways of doing things.
“She was a brilliant woman,” Malejki continued. “If students didn’t understand something, she would work with them until they did. She was very sure of herself as a teacher; she knew her stuff. Other teachers would say, ‘Go ask Anna’ if you had a question.”
Anna was strict, Malejki said, but students liked and respected her. “You could hear a pin drop in that room.”
In addition to her love of teaching, Anna was devoted to her family. “She loved to cook, mostly Polish specialties,” said her daughter, who recalled how Anna could make a delicious meal for 30 easily. She brought the family together with love, warmth and home-cooked meals.
“She was the matriarch of her family, the eldest of six. When she came to this country, she was the pioneer and got everyone [her siblings] going to college,” Crenshaw said. “I’m so amazed at her strength, resilience and courage in forging a life in a new country.”
Reading was another of her hobbies. “She was definitely a bookworm and English was her passion. She could pick up War and Peace and make her way through it easily,” Crenshaw said.
Anna is survived by her husband of more than 65 years, Adam; her son, Stanley, and daughter, Joanne; her grandchildren, Tina, Keri, Kaiti, Sean and Adam; and, in her final year, her first great-grandchild, Lucian.
Condolences can be shared on this website.
