Paula Rauschenberger shared her love of theater and speech with students in North Dakota for 34 years before retiring.

She went to Sawyer Public School at the young age of 22 for an interview with the entire Sawyer school board for a position to teach English. One of the first things she was asked was “Can you direct a class play?” and she said she had participated in theater with the Mouse River Players in Minot while she was attending Minot State University. She took the position and really relied on her two mentors: Roxy Jochimsen and Sandie Karnack. If Rauschenberger had any questions, she called the two women and “they were both very supportive.”

Jochimsen and Karnack really encouraged her. They told her she could do it and also that she had an eye for teaching theater. In the first few years, she really learned a lot.

The first play that Rauschenberger directed was called “Toga, Toga, Toga.” She was warned that the first matinee play was never received well in previous years. She and the junior class worked very hard to rehearse. On the night of that first performance, she said it was received very well. “I kind of broke that ‘tradition.'” The juniors were very proud of what they created on stage and their self-confidence levels were boosted significantly.

“They had a sense of belonging and became closer as a class because they did it together,” she said.

After that first school year of 1984-1985, Rauschenberger was hooked. She loved directing and creating a story on the stage.

In 1999, she took a job at Glenburn Public School and taught English and theater to the high school students. She was also in charge of directing the extracurricular One Act plays after school and on weekends.

Rauschenberger taught Theater I, Theater II, Novels I, and Novels II. In order for juniors to be able to participate in Theater I in the spring, they had to take Novels I in the spring. The same thing went for the seniors – Novels II in the spring and Theater II in the spring. She found that those who participated in theater also wanted to be a part of One Act in the fall. In addition, she noticed that her students’ reading levels went up after the fall semester from taking the novels classes.

When she first took the position, she was told that she was supposed to continue with the community theater program more than the school’s theater program. She understood the importance of entertainment for the community, but as a teacher, she felt that it was more her responsibility to improve the high school’s theater program rather than the community program.

Then in the summer of 2011, the Souris River flooded and Rauschenberger lost her house. At that point in time, she had a lot on her plate. She had to sort things out with the loss of her home, and in order to do that, she took a position at Central Campus in Minot teaching speech and debate.

The thing she enjoys the most about teaching speech is seeing her students’ confidence increase and give them the tools they need to do future presentations. At first, a lot of her students went into her classes thinking they were going to hate speech because they were afraid of speaking in front of groups of people.

She geared the class around the students to make them comfortable. Once they got comfortable speaking in front of each other, Rauschenberger heard them saying that speech was their favorite hour of the day. She was also shy in middle and high school, not having to take speech until she was in college. One of her goals is making sure her students are prepared for college or their careers.

After 34 years, she retired in the spring of 2019. The following summer, she heard that South Prairie High School was looking for a part-time teacher to do two sections of freshman English and one section of intervention reading. “That was exactly what I needed. Part-time is perfect,” Rauschenberger said.

After learning that they offered speech as an elective, she went to the principal, Darwin Routledge, and the superintendent, Wayne Stanley, proposing adding speech to the senior English class as a requirement next spring. She knew that students weren’t going to take speech as an elective if they could avoid it. Routledge and Stanley have been supportive, and Rauschenberger said she is very glad she has a chance to continue doing what she loves.

In her continuous efforts to build her students up, Rauschenberger was inducted into the Communications, Speech, and Theater Association of North Dakota last September. So far, there are only 62 members in the CSTAND Hall of Fame. Some of them were her mentors, and Rauschenberger said she was “blown away” to share the experience with others who gave their lives to help with speech and theater.

The ceremony took place at the Baymont Inn in Bismarck. Her son, Tanner Rauschenberger, and husband, Troy Rauschenberger, were there to support her, along with many other members of her family.

Rauschenberger said she will be teaching until she doesn’t love doing it anymore.

(Prairie Profile is a weekly feature profiling interesting people in our region. We welcome suggestions from our readers. Call Regional Editor Eloise Ogden at 857-1944 or call 1-800-735-3229. You also can send email suggestions to eogden@minotdailynews.com.)