LaMaster’s rambunctious teaching style often sends students charging toward positive results

John LaMaster will never be replaced by an artificial intelligence program. The host server’s circuits would explode too often.

A senior instructor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Purdue University Fort Wayne, LaMaster, BA ’86, MS ’91, is an atypical and nontraditional teacher blasting through stereotypes in precalculus and calculus courses.

Some students tentatively enter his classroom dealing with intimidation, but LaMaster flips that by engaging everyone, telling them to be unafraid of mistakes. He even asks them to use his first name.

“They do not want to miss the next class based on what crazy thing I’ll do next,” LaMaster said. “They don’t realize I’m really doing the content.”

That includes using sound effects, lobbing candy and bananas, telling jokes, employing props such as a stuffed rhinoceros, and even standing on a desk. He tosses a student-crocheted rhino to the first person who is expected to answer a question. Then that student picks who catches it next. Most are quickly involved and hooked in the practice.

His methods may sound nontraditional, but they are effective judging by the response he receives from students and the respect he’s earned from his colleagues. In a 34-year career full of awards, LaMaster was joined by William Sauerland, assistant professor in the School of Music, and Julia Smith, assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education, as Featured Faculty Award winners for 2023.

LaMaster developed his philosophy while working in the private sector before starting his teaching career. A CEO gave his employees the book “Rhinoceros Success,” which teaches that a rhinoceros is impossible to stop once achieving full momentum.

“If you have the mindset of a three-ton, charging, snorting rhinoceros, any goal will be trampled over,” LaMaster said. “Then, when we do this with herd motivation, you are even stronger.

“Students may have been tempted to give up because of fatigue, and past weakness, and what we’re asking of them is not easy. I say they are allowed to complain, but I want them to have the rhino attitude, and they are inspired by it.”

LaMaster shows them how to get there using encouragement.

“They walk in sometimes believing they cannot do this, and that’s their identity,” he said. “I say, `This is who you think you are, but I have a different view of you. You are not this. You can do anything you set your mind to because you have snorting, charging rhino energy.’

“It is amazing to teach them life lessons through mathematics that they may not be able to see beyond themselves. God transforms them, and I just let myself be used. Math is really, really cold and intimidating, but God used my goofiness to help my students.”

The more he opens himself to his students, LaMaster said, the more he and they both get from his teaching. Before giving his spring semester final, which happened to coincide with Star Wars Day on May 4, LaMaster dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi and gave an extra point to anyone dressed as a character. John Williams compositions from the legendary franchise played in the background.

Why? The inventiveness takes away the test stress, and students relax.

“I want them to feel that it’s safe to make mistakes, which are never going to be shamed, but they are going to be celebrated,” LaMaster said. “`You made an excellent wrong turn. That was so inciteful.’ I don’t even call them a mistake. It’s a window into their thinking, and shows they are thinking the right way but need some slight help with their GPS.”

LaMaster said he developed the philosophy after hearing a NASA scientist explain there would be lots of mistakes on the way in the pursuit of traveling to Mars, but those would teach how to get there eventually.

“My students feel safe,” he said. “I feel like it’s an honor when these students take a chance and open up to me. I tell them, `I developed a unique heart condition when I became a teacher. Every time you ask me a question, my heart grows bigger.’”

LaMaster presents those taking his classes with a short biography where he admits to having math anxiety in high school, and that math was not something he came to love easily.

“It’s delicious to me now, but it was an acquired taste,” he quips.

But that openness is part of his teaching gift.

“I can’t get the content to them without breaking down a bunch of walls, and to break those walls down takes listening, being attentive, and humanizing the teaching,” LaMaster said. “I don’t want to be replaced by a robot, and I should be if I can’t do that.”