Kim Vanderlaan makes learning just as fun and memorable as the teachers she had growing up

Kim Vanderlaan is a great third-grade teacher partly because she had a great third-grade teacher herself. It was that kind of positive classroom experience that made her want to be an educator in the first place. To this day, she still talks to her teacher, Mrs. Klipping, on her drives home.

“She just made learning fun — all of my teachers did,” Vanderlaan said. “I had some great teachers. I come from a small town, so they knew my aunts and uncles. Mrs. Clipping just resonated with me. She made cursive writing fun, and if we did well on our assignments she’d give us buckeyes.”

It may seem like a trivial gesture, but students back then worked hard to get a buckeye. She remembered if a student had a great day or kept focused, Mrs. Klipping would give them a little fuzzy pom-pom charm on their desk that had little feet, googly eyes and a pair of antennas.

“It was the little things she did,” Vanderlaan said. “It was those little things that made you feel supported … For me, it was the affirmation that what you’re doing matters. I want to be that for my students, too. What you’re doing matters. I see you. I want them to have that internal feeling of ‘I want to do good for me.’”

For the past 18 years, Vanderlaan has served the Newton Community School District in a number of ways. She started out as a half-day teacher sharing a classroom with a colleague before eventually teaching sixth grade and then fourth grade at Aurora Heights Elementary.

Eventually, she transferred over to Woodrow Wilson Elementary to teach third-grade students, just like Mrs. Klipping back in Vanderlaan’s hometown of Britt. Principal Todd Schuster said Vanderlaan balances high expectations with building positive relationships and keeping students accountable.

Students may be coming into third grade reading at 12 words per minute, but by the time they leave she wants them to hit 80 or 90 words per minute.

Which is probably why Vanderlaan feels like her students may think she is hard on them. Even so, it comes from a good place. She holds students accountable by instilling them with the feeling of wanting to be the best individual they can be. She wants students to reach their full potential and to do it for themselves.

“Not because I’m going to give them a good grade or not or because Mrs. Vanderlaan wants it for me; I want them to want it for themselves,” she said. “My approach is, for every kid, I believe in you and I’m going to help you get where you need to be, but I want you to believe in you, too.”

For Vanderlaan, third grade is not only a time when students reach milestones in math or reading (she loves that part, too), it is also a key moment in their lives.

In kindergarten, first grade and second grade, the kids are learning the skills they need to become independent students. By third grade, Vanderlaan said, they put everything they have learned together and find those ever-satisfying “lightbulb moments,” that instance when a student finally comprehends what they learn.

“I love that they’re independent but they still need you,” she said. “And I love cursive writing, and we’re really hitting multiplication and division hard. I love that, and I love the hands-on science experiments we get to do. I love getting to see them grow as readers. It’s amazing! They’re finding their own way in school.”

Setting high expectations for students, no matter the grade, will always earn the teacher a certain level of pushback. I’ve never done that! I’ve never been good at math, and both of my parents are bad at math, too! Vanderlaan shakes her head and smiles at these kinds of comments. She’s heard it all before.

“It just means we have to work a little bit harder,” Vanderlaan said. “There are things I struggle with too, and I make mistakes all the time. My kids will say, ‘Mrs. Vanderlaan made a mistake!’ Yup, I did. Darn it. What are we going to do? We’re going to learn from it! … You move past it. You don’t let it define you.”

Change it. Fix it. Move on.

Instilling this type of attitude is important to Vanderlaan, especially in today’s society. It’s hard out there, she said, and so many students are wanting perfection or want to solve a problem on the first try. Vanderlaan said she tries to tell her students that it is OK to not know everything.

“I always say to them: If you knew everything, I wouldn’t have a job,” she said. “…Life isn’t perfect. Life is messy. And it’s OK to sit in that sometimes and be like, ‘You know what? Yup! I made a mistake. I don’t know that. I’m going to work hard to try and figure that out.’”

And it makes those moments when they do figure it out all the more satisfying. They did it all by themselves, and they are so proud of it.

These experiences of comprehension are the most important when developing a child’s education, but they are not necessarily what they will remember most. Most likely it will be the little things that stick around for years to come. Already, Vanderlaan is seeing the impact those little things had on her students.

Some of her students remember when they made Oreo balls in class, for instance. Many still can’t get a particular song out of their head.

Vanderlaan explained, “I teach multiplication through song, so we learned our twos through a Taylor Swift song: ‘Look What You Made Me Two.’ My kids still come up to me and say, ‘I am singing those songs in middle school now!’”

Buckeye, Taylor Swift. Tomayto, tomahto.