Mathéo Vergnolle spent two years at the Preparatory Class for Great Schools (PCGS) before attending École Polytechnique l’X, the famous school that produces engineers in France.

Before coming to Vietnam to have a 5-month (from November 2019 to March 2020) internship, he spent 24 months to prepare for the entrance exam to I’X. According to Matheo, in order to pass the exam to the school, one ‘doesn’t need to be good, just excellent’.

He has had the opportunity to visit many tourism sites, such as Hoi An, Hue, Da Lat and HCM City. He visited history and art musuems, and discovered traditional Vietnamese culture through performances and water puppet shows.

I’X decided that its future engineers not only need to have professional learning, but they need to be equipped with multi-field knowlege.

Therefore, Matheo is working in Vietnam to discover cultural characteristics in the country and experience the role of a ‘competent person’ – something that graduates will face when they go to work.

He is a mathematics teacher at Le Quy Don High School for the Gifted in Binh Dinh province.

Realizing that the textbooks for high school students in Vietnam mostly show texts, numbers and formulas, with few illustrative examples, Matheo decided to take full advantage of computer software to teach mathematics.

“The software such as GeoGebra, Python and the knowlege about computing science serve as my powerful assistants. I use them to illustrate the changes of parameters in graphs and inequalities. Thanks to them, maths is not just dry numbers and formulas,” he said.

For example, when teaching the lesson about the limits of numerical sequences, he uses Python to create a Sierpinski triangle.

The young teacher encourages his students to explain their homework to classmates, because this is a good way for them to learn specialized English.

“Knowing English math vocabulary is essential, especially for those who intend to study advanced math in college,” he said.

Bui Minh Hoang, a 10th grader at Le Quy Don High School, said he finds the young teacher’s lessons very interesting, because the teacher usually uses software to illustrate equations and inequalities.

“Perhaps the teacher does not have much pedagogical experience, but in return, he is very devoted to his lectures,” he said.

Matheo came to Vietnam to teach mathematics, but he can also learn many things in Vietnam.

He has had the opportunity to visit many tourism sites, such as Hoi An, Hue, Da Lat and HCM City. He visited history and art musuems, and discovered traditional Vietnamese culture through performances and water puppet shows. He also enjoyed a traditional Vietnamese Tet with Tran Thanh Son, deputy director of ICISE (The International Center of Interdisciplinary Science Education). 

Mai Lan

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