When a Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (SMWC) student tells Associate Professor of Mathematics Rob Vandermolen, Ph.D., that they struggle with math, he reminds them that the struggle means they’re learning.
It’s part of his teaching philosophy, inspired by his teaching hero, Miss Frizzle from the hit 1990s children’s show, “The Magic School Bus”.
“Her teaching philosophy was to take chances and get messy because we learn by struggling,” said Vandermolen, who is in his sixth-year teaching in SMWC’s math program. “There’s going to be a struggle almost anytime you’re learning something new. The problem in math is that we’re often taught as kids that if we don’t get it quickly, we’re dumb, but that’s just not the case.
“Fear is one of the biggest challenges in teaching math, so I try to alleviate that with my students. I think students feel that way because someone made them feel inadequate in math at some point, but we don’t do that when we teach language. I want to teach people that math is the most beautiful language because it truly describes everything in our world.”
Even Vandermolen took his time learning his strength in math. He dropped out of his first attempt at college and worked a few years before returning to the classroom as a student at a community college in South Carolina.
“When I went back to school, I thought I would become a nurse but there was a waiting list,” he said. “It had been over a decade since I’d been in a math class, but I had to take a Calculus 3 class. Luckily, I had a professor who told me I should be a math major. I ended up a math teacher.”
Vandermolen teaches all the math classes on campus, except remedial math, and he gets students involved in projects that give them hands-on experience. He also teaches physics and is director of the math and computer science department, but he’ll tell you his favorite class to teach is algorithms in elementary education.
“I love that class because I don’t just walk in there and tell the students to do an algorithm. I asked them how I could mess it up if I were a student in their class,” he said. “It’s not your standard math class. I teach both in-person and online and most of the students are already teachers in the classroom. They’re people who wanted to be teachers for most of their lives because they wanted to help people. I feel that in their responses.”
In keeping with his teaching philosophy, Vandermolen said his students really find out if they’re learning a topic.
“I use tests as a chance for students to reassess their knowledge throughout the semester,” he said. “They master a certain number of topics and get points for their levels of knowledge. They can redo any topic until the end of semester, which makes it an opportunity to continue learning. If they take a test and don’t do well, students think they’re bad at math, which makes math a punishment. Miss Frizzle would not be happy with me if I taught that way.”
Because there are no redos in graduate school, students in Vandermolen’s upper-level courses take three tests.
“Math is not a race. Some problems should take you time to figure out,” he said. “There are singular problems we’ve been thinking about for centuries, so we’re not in a rush, but our culture tells us that we need answers quickly. I don’t like that in math. Math is about well-thought-out problems that take time to solve.”
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