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Making Sense of the Numbers

Fifth grade teacher Lisa Suben works hard to take the magic out of mathemathics-and that's a good thing

By Ting Yu (N.Y.C. '03)

"Any monkey can add," Lisa Suben (S. Louisiana '03) likes to tell her students. But understanding when it's appropriate to add or when you should use multiplication over addition-now that's an accomplishment. That simple insistence on understanding propelled Suben, the founding fifth grade math teacher at KIPP's AIM Academy in Washington, D.C., to lead her students last year to achieve the single largest one-year math increase-from the 16th to the 77th percentile-in KIPP history. On average, her students advanced five grade levels.

Despite the fact that KIPP's math program yields some of the highest math scores in the country, Suben lobbied to create her own curriculum. "My personal experience with math was very active," explains Suben, who holds a degree in economics from George Washington University. "I grew up solving word problems on car trips with my mom and dad. I constructed a lot of my own learning." She wants her students to do the same.

As the leader of a new school, AIM principal Khala Johnson (Metro D.C. '99) admits she was skeptical. "I'd seen what other KIPP schools do work so well, so I was sort of like, 'Why reinvent the wheel?'" she says. Still, she gave Suben a cautious green light-and checked up on her daily. "It was always these 'wow' moments every time I walked into her classroom," Johnson recalls. "She was not teaching the shortcut; she was not teaching down to them, and they appreciate that. Her kids can compete with kids at parochial and private schools."

Each night, after a 10-hour day at school, Suben planted herself in front of the computer to create texts that were easier for her kids to read and workbooks with graphic organizers that emphasized problem solving. It was a method she honed during her corps years in rural Opelousas, La., where her mentor, a veteran teacher and math curriculum specialist, taught her the value of a good question.

"The questions have to be meaningful, and come to a solution that gives you an 'Aha!' or 'That's not what I expected,'" Suben says. "To a 10-year-old, zero means nothing. But [the zero in] 2.05 doesn't mean zero. Breaking that connection is incredibly difficult. You have to rebuild a schema that's accurate. Whatever they learn has to have a purpose-to solve a problem. Then it can be connected, extended, tested."

Suben works hard to demystify numbers. "I find that a lot of kids have a sense that math is magic, or if you know the secret trick, you can do math," she says. "I want them to have a concrete exploration to refer to. That way you don't have them saying, 'Oh, I'm just not good at math. I don't get it.' You either work to understand it or you don't."

For example, during a recent lesson, one child gazes at a number line and asks Suben why the difference between 8 and 10 isn't 1 since there is only one number between them. Impressed with the thought process behind the inquiry, Suben responds enthusiastically. "They ask brilliant questions," she says later. "And how much more effective is it when the child discovers something for himself?"

Despite the stunning success of her students, Suben says she is plagued by self-doubt. "This year I don't have pressure from parents and my principal to perform, and I find that I'm more neurotic. On a daily basis, I think, 'I lost my mojo.'"

But that hasn't stopped Suben from setting even higher goals for her students this year-a task that became slightly more daunting when her computer, with her entire curriculum on it, crashed a few weeks back. Distraught, Suben, who is now working from the hard copies she had saved, called her mentor in Louisiana to lament. "But she just said, 'Oh, you would just rewrite it all next year anyway.' And, you know, she's probably right."