One of DePaul Prep’s newest teachers, Mr. Bauer, said that becoming a teacher was a very long decision throughout years of schooling. While it was a process to come to his final decision, Mr. Bauer doesn’t regret a single moment.

“I think it goes back to what I did in high school and college, with service projects with younger children and seeing the joy they get when doing these different activities and learning about science; I wanted to do that daily.” 

His experience starting at DePaul Prep has been a very smooth transition for him, both based on in person learning standards and the sense of community that DePaul Prep has.

 “It’s been really great. My coworkers have been awesome as well as the other teachers throughout the school. There’s lots of support helping me as a teacher in the school year. So far everything has been going really well.” 

The in person style of learning has been a seamless transition for him because at his former school, they were in person all throughout last year. Bauer says COVID-19 has influenced his teaching in a positive way because it showed him how to be more flexible and find ways to do things out of the ordinary. At the same time, getting the DePaul Prep students back into the flow of regular in person learning has been a struggle for him as well as many other teachers in our community. With our hybrid learning schedule last year, the beginning of this year was a struggle to get our student body acclimated with coming back to school in person every day, Bauer explained. 

With coming to a new school, Mr. Bauer learned about DePaul Prep’s core values as well. The one that influences his life the most is service. 

“I think the biggest core value to have an impact in my life, especially with teaching, was service because throughout high school and my college and graduate school years, there was a lot of kind of outreach programs with kids to get them interested in science, like putting on and environment day presentation or cam demos with high school or middle school kids. I think that kind of service is the biggest factor and impact into my teaching career,” said Bauer. 

Mr. Bauer’s teaching style is hands-on, and he likes to get students involved as much as possible. 

“I really enjoy doing labs and activities whenever we can and I think that the hands-on perspective just really helps make it more entertaining but also a viable learning resource and also makes it fun for me as we go through,” Bauer explained.

In the later days of October, Mr. Bauer put on a Halloween experiment for his chemistry classes. “When I was student teaching, my cooperating teacher gave a Halloween demonstration presentation and it was so much fun. That’s all we did that whole class and so I was like I need to continue that. So at my old-school I put together my skit, put together my demos, and change it and add to it as we go through.”  

In this writer’s opinion, Mr. Bauer is an amazing teacher. DePaul Prep has done a great job of giving him a warm welcome to the community.