Mr. McAteer, more commonly known as Mr. Mac, has the reputation of being a fun and exciting teacher both in and out of his classroom. He forms strong relationships with his students and becomes a mentor to many throughout their four years at Padua.

Michael McAteer graduated from Lansdale Catholic High School in Lansdale, PA before going off to Temple University, where he received a degree in Secondary Education with a focus in Social Studies. He later went on to Gwynedd-Mercy College (now Gwynedd Mercy University), where he earned a Master’s of Science in Reading.

Mr. Mac knew that he wanted to be a teacher from a very young age. Inspired by one of the teachers that he had in grade school, he says, “Something dawned on me in sixth grade, I don’t remember quite what it was, but I remember how my teacher was always so good to us and that was the kind of job I wanted. I wanted to come in every day excited to be there and she was the model for that.”

According to many of the students that Mr. Mac has taught in the past, he has definitely achieved his goal of being a good and excited teacher in the classroom. Senior Grace Liberatore, who had Mr. Mac for AP Psychology her sophomore years says, “He always tries to engage his students in class and he’s very approachable: if you don’t understand something he goes out of his way to make sure that you get the information you need.”

“…he goes out of his way to make sure that you get the information you need.” – Grace Liberatore

Some of Mr. Mac’s greatest memories from when he was younger are from his high school years. He was involved in sports year-round, playing on varsity football, basketball, and track for three out of his four years at Lansdale Catholic. He says, “There are definitely certain football games that will always stand out to me. Basketball will always be special because my team went further than any other had in my school’s history. I also got to run the 4×4 and the 4×8 at Penn Relays, so that was another amazing experience.” Mr. Mac is still an athlete at heart, (assistant) coaching the Archbishop Prendergast girls basketball team and the Padua golf team.

Mr. Mac is an avid traveler, having visited five out of the seven continents. He travels as frequently as he can and is planning on going to Ireland next summer. His favorite place that he has ever been to is Croatia, where he went with his wife for their honeymoon last year. He says, “The people [in Croatia] were the most genuine people I’ve met in a long time. They worked incredibly hard and to them, it was rewarding: they did their work with a lot of pride.” He says that he would highly recommend for everyone to go there if they get a chance and he hopes to get to Thailand and Africa in the future.

A Padua360 exclusive fun fact about Mr. Mac: he never actually had any interest in psychology while in college, never even taking a psychology course until getting his Master’s Degree. He said that the only reason he started teaching it was “as a favor” to the department chair at one of the schools he previously taught at. Now, he can’t even imagine his life without it, saying, “I never stop looking for new materials and books to read to use in class. I would say that probably eight out of every ten books I read have something to do with psychology.”