Multiplying educational success through math
Summary: Ruth Sava, a Latina math interventionist in South Gate, California, is transforming how students — particularly Latino youth — experience and succeed in math. Drawing from her own journey as a Peruvian immigrant, she now uses small-group, personalized instruction to close learning gaps and build student confidence in a subject many find intimidating.
When Los Angeles K-12 school teacher Ruth Sava emigrated to the United States from Peru at the age of nine, she carried with her one major academic super power: she loved math. Not only that, she had already taken the math level she was placed in upon her arrival in Pasadena, California. Sava is now a math interventionist for fifth to eighth students at KIPP Corazon-Upper School in South Gate, a member of the UnidosUS Affiliate KIPP Charter Schools. She teaches her students, the majority of whom are Latino, that with the right support, they are all capable of conquering math and with it the confidence and the problem-solving skills they need for an increasingly STEM-oriented world.
We wanted to know more about how she helps students to become emotionally and academically resilient, and how she can inspire other educators to do the same.
Question: It’s hard to demystify math, especially for our youngest students. How did you know this is what you wanted to do?
Answer: I don’t recall playing school as a child, but I do recall that my uncle was a professor, so he took me to one of his classes and that’s where I realized what I wanted to do. When I moved to this country, I didn’t know any English, but I knew numbers, so I double-majored in Spanish and teaching with an emphasis on math. Once I graduated, I didn’t want to go into the classroom right away. I spent two years working with City Year Los Angeles as an AmeriCorps Member, serving as a mentor, tutor and role model. I had a group of seventh graders who were performing below their grade level in math and reading and provided targeted intervention in hopes of closing their learning gap. There I got the real experience of what it’s like to be in the classroom in a public school.
Q: How did that service project help you pivot to a master’s degree in teaching?
A: City Year has different partnerships, and one of them is with Urban Teachers, which is now called City Teaching Alliance. It’s a four-year program where two of those years are spent obtaining a master’s degree through Johns Hopkins University, which ultimately led me to getting placed in a school in Baltimore City where I spent seven years teaching fifth grade math. From there I decided to go back home to California, and KIPP, which is a charter school, was really supportive in transferring my credentials in a state where that can be incredibly hard to do.
Q: What makes a math interventionist different from a math teacher? How did you train for that role?
A: Unlike some schools where an educational interventionist has a whole block of students they teach all day, I don’t actually have a homeroom class with the same students. At KIPP, I’m a pull-out math interventionist which means I just pull students out for certain intervention blocks to support them with closing the gaps they have in math, usually during the time that they’d be learning math with their peers. Our school has specifically designed our schedule to fit intervention blocks, so technically all classes are doing intervention at that time: some with teachers in small groups and others on computers with i-ready.
It’s personalized, small-group support based on data that we gather from their testing at the beginning of the year, where we look over the data to see which students are performing two or more grade levels below where they should be. The hope is that by pulling them out and giving them more tailored instruction, we can help them fill that gap and catch up.
Q: What kinds of activities do you do to make this happen?
A: When I was in school, math was very robotic. You just follow steps one, two and three, but you don’t learn why. A lot of students need to understand the concept behind it to be able to engage with it, so I bring a lot of manipulatives. With a smaller group, I can do games like rolling the dice, and we use those numbers to multiply. This helps them to engage with math while thinking of it as a game. When they ask me “why do I have to multiply this way?” I explain that whenever you put zero as a placeholder, you can multiply in 110s instead of 1s.
Q: Why is KIPP’s math intervention model so unique?
A: It has a lot to do with the resources. We have the funding to allocate roles like mine, but a lot of other schools haven’t found that funding, so unfortunately their goal is just to get a math teacher in the classroom. My role is unique in that it gives us the opportunity to support our students with needed math skills that cannot be covered in class because we follow a curriculum.
Q: This might seem like an obvious question, but why is math such an important subject for K-12 students?
A: Math lays the foundation for many areas of learning and life. It provides students with the ability to critically think and problem-solve. For example, in math we know that there is usually only one specific answer to a math problem. However, there are many ways to get tam answer. This teaches students how to solve problems and break down complex issues into manageable parts, which is a life skill. Right now, a lot of our students — especially middle schoolers — can’t see past where they’re currently living. They’re not thinking yet about the future like high school and college; they’re just thinking about tomorrow. But I notice that as they learn math, they develop confidence in themselves and that will help them as they move forward in whatever they choose.
Q: Right now, there are so many budget cuts and policy changes going on in education at the federal level. How are those impacting you as an educator?
A: I mean, just thinking about my position as an interventionist. It’s a much-needed position, but it’s an add-on, so it’s scary to think that next year we might not have the budget for my role because we need the homeroom teachers. I also think about how other schools could benefit from having a math interventionist or an ELA interventionist, but they won’t necessarily prioritize those roles because again, they have to focus on getting teachers into homeroom classes.
Q: How are you focusing on teaching and staying hopeful in the midst of those concerns?
A: I’m thinking about opportunities beyond the classroom, how I can provide support in a bigger, broader way, like even working with school districts to be a math coach, especially now that I have experience teaching elementary and middle school math. I feel like I can support teachers to become better math teachers in the classroom.
Q: Do you have any anecdotes about overcoming adversity that help to fuel you today?
A: In my first year teaching in Baltimore City, I landed in the lowest-performing schools in Maryland after practically everyone, including administrators, had been fired. It was really hard for all of us new faculty and staff to rebuild a culture of academics and positive behaviors with the students. I had many doubts that year, but then seeing the growth of my students and seeing our school culture change and parents becoming more supportive changed my perspective.
Q: Why is it so important to have diverse educators teaching subjects like math?
A: For many of my Black students, I was one of the few, if not the only, Latina figures in their lives, a responsibility I didn’t take lightly. I was able to share with them the beauty of my Peruvian culture, from language to traditions, and provide them with a different worldview outside of Baltimore. I remember we hosted a Culture Night event and each class had to research a country in the world and my students picked Peru because they wanted to learn more about where I was from. They saw the pride I carried for my identity, which in turn helped them have pride in theirs. I also was able to educate them on the stereotypes they might have had about the Latinx community and help them see and appreciate the differences around them. In turn, they taught me about their experiences, their love for Baltimore and their family values, creating a bond that was deeper than just the classroom.
But here with KIPP, it’s that much easier to bond because we share a culture and native Spanish language. They don’t have to struggle or have an interpreter so the connection is that much closer.
Q: How does that sense of connection translate to conversations about math?
A: A lot of the time I have students who come to me and say “I’m just not a math person,” and when I speak to their parents, they say the same thing. So I tell those parents “Well you probably were a math person. You just didn’t get the right math education. You just didn’t get the chance to learn it the right way, and no one helped you believe that you could be a math person.” And that’s what I want to say to my students because they don’t feel confident doing hard things but it’s through doing hard things that we build confidence.
Q: In other words, how hard things are presented to us or the support we’re given to engage in them?
A: You just need to break things down more. I want them to see themselves as those kinds of people. Because at the end of the day, a lot of the money is in STEM jobs, and you have to be ready. You have to know this stuff so that you can have opportunities as well as choices. I know sometimes Latinos don’t feel like they see themselves in a lot of those types of positions, so I want to instill in my kids that they can fill those positions. But it starts now with how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.
