[Tutor] Testing classes with class variables: How best to reset class state between tests?

[boB Stepp]

class MyClass:
    class_var1 = value1
    class_var2 = value2
    ...

    methods some which may affect class variables

This is a spinoff of my earlier questions about creating an instance
counter for a class.  I started to implement this in my actual code
and started to write tests for the counter.  I quickly realized that
the counter variable retained state between tests, and, in fact,
already written tests would now populate the counter before I ever got
around to the new counter tests.  So how to best deal with this?  Two
ideas come immediately to mind:

1) Use setup and/or teardown methods to manually reset all class
variables to their desired initial state.  A downside of this is that
I will have to go back to all previous tests involving this class and
add these methods.

2) Forcibly reloading the import with importlib.reload(myclassmodule).
This seems like using a sledge hammer to swat a fly.  And it would
seem that it would have to be done repeatedly and added to earlier
tests as well.

Does Python provide a better solution?  For the record my test runner
is currently pytest.

TIA!

-- 
boB