The History Behind the History Teacher - Max Gallagher

Every student at CAPA loves Mr. Rauscher. That might seem like a hyperbole, but if you ask any student who has been taught by him, I would bet money that he’s at least one of their top 5 teachers of all time. His relatability, laid-back demeanor, and constant endeavor to make class fun make him a welcome presence, enough so that many students (including myself) sit in his room during lunch. However,  many students wonder about what their teachers’ lives were like outside of the classroom. So, during one lunch period, I got the full story on Mr. Rauscher’s journey to becoming a history teacher and one of CAPA’s most beloved educators, as well as his likes and dislikes about teaching. I walked into his room, which always has the lights turned off to create a more beneficial learning environment for his students. He greets me with a smile, his ever-so-slightly intimidating stature masked by his warm grin and eyes full of heart. We sit down, him at his desk and I in the swivel chair he keeps near it for private conversations with students, and he begins to tell me about his life.

After graduating high school, Mr. Rauscher went to Rowan University, but dropped out after joining a fraternity and doing “all the wrong things”. He sometimes brings up these first college experiences as a cautionary tale to students in his lessons, attempting to ward them away from making mistakes in their journey to higher education. After working in restaurants in Old City for 12 whole years, he went back to college at CCP. He described it as “really weird… the classes I was in, especially at the 101 level, I realized very quickly that in some cases I was like, 10 years older than some of the people I was in the classes with”. During his second attempt at college, he worked here at CAPA as a student teacher, mentoring under fellow history teacher Mr. Noga, despite only being a year younger than him. “Usually with a student teacher and a mentor, you’re talking about people who have a professional gap and an age gap at the same time and it feels more like a mentorship,” he says. “With [Mr. Noga], I learned a lot, but it was like buddy-buddy, it was great”. While many student teachers expect to often get disrespected by the students more than a traditional teacher, Mr. Rauscher didn’t experience that at CAPA, and reports that other student teachers he’s met here feel the same way.

After graduating, becoming a teacher, and gaining experience, he still feels that certain things are harder for him than others. “It’s the organization,” he says, “it’s part of the reason I dropped out of college before, I just always find myself in a hole and looking for fun things to do instead of focusing on the task at hand, and I think that why a lot of people here find me relatable”. While he does have his struggles (as anyone does), he still finds his job rewarding. He says, “even the days I just want to walk out… directly related to the fact that I’m a teacher, every day I leave here with the recognition that I just spent 8 hours with people who report to me… that my room is a place that they want to be in during those 8 hours”. 

Mr. Rauscher’s path to becoming a teacher may have had more bends than most, but it seems that it was a rewarding one to walk. Working a job that feels satisfying every day in modern America is unbelievably rare, so he seems to be in a good place. If he could change one thing, though, Mr. Rauscher would want his students to ask more questions. “They just take everything I say without a single grain of salt… I want to see more curiosity, I want to see more inquisitiveness,” he says. So the next time you have a lesson from Mr. Rauscher, ask a question. It’s the least you can do after he’s put so much work into getting where he is today.