by Rudy Alston, staff writer
Mr. Lauer is the World History teacher in class 233 and he just started working here at River Hill this year. He has not been a teacher for long and has only started teaching in December last school year at Oakland Mills, teaching US history.
Mr.Lauer works at two schools, River Hill and Oakland Mills. He starts off here and stays for periods one, two and three, then leaves to go to Oakland Mills for the rest of the day.
He also went to PennWest University for four years to get a major in secondary education with a focus on social studies. He graduated in May of 2025.
Mr. Lauer wants to make sure his students won’t be bored in his class and wants them to be engaged and excited about the subject. He wants his students to “just have a place where kids can come and actually enjoy coming to see history,” commented Mr. Lauer. “History could be boring, especially if the teacher didn’t teach it right, so I like to make it more interactive so kids actually get more out of it.”
He does this by having warm-ups that are fun and are in some way related to what he is teaching. For example, on 22 Oct, the warm up asked a hypothetical on what they would do if they find a pirates lost treasure. This led to a discussion about the Spanish shipwrecks and how some of them have treasure on them.
He mainly has assignments done using physical materials instead of digital tools so he can work through assignments with his students and read through the materials with them so they can get a full understanding of them and also he finds it better than digital tools.
“I hate the computers,” said Mr. Lauer. “ I’m like an old man when it comes to computers, so I’d rather give them papers and actually go through the stuff together and actually read the stuff.”
Mr.Lauer also makes sure the students are able to engage by having short lectures, allowing students to work in groups, basically “having more collaborative work together, short lectures because I know lectures can be pretty boring,” discussed Mr. Lauer.
An example of a demonstration he does with the class is making a scavenger hunt with post-its around the class in different stations for the students to find information.
He also adds decorations to the class to make it look more lively. He added an Indian Flag, posters of World War II planes, an old historical map of the world, and he is trying to get a poster for the NFL rankings.
From what Mr. Lauer notices, his students are excited about his class and they do have fun with the subjects. “They always have fun in class. Everyone usually ends up laughing and always ends up asking for some jolly ranchers,” stated Mr. Lauer.
Overall, Mr. Lauer has had a good experience with his students, other staff in the school and has had a fun time with the new experiences he has seen here at River Hill.