Who Created It
Seeing Numbers, The Real Way to Learn Math is authored and developed by C. Sue Phelps, Ph.D. Dr. Phelps was reared in a coal-mining town of southeastern Kentucky. After the completion of a two-year degree from Cumberland College, she returned to native McCreary County to teach. At age eighteen she began teaching in a one-room school with all eight grades and 42 students. Dr. Phelps' goal was to complete a bachelor's in mathematics and teach secondary mathematics, but took a two-year detour teaching elementary school to accumulate the money to continue her education at the University of /Seeing-Numbers/SueSmile.aspx?width=250&height=195)
Kentucky. With her bachelor's degree in hand, she started to teach mathematics in high school.
She completed her master's degrees in mathematics education at The Ohio State University. During her study at OSU, she started a now 45-year pursuit of searching for and designing more effective way to teach with her first love being the teaching of mathematics.
She has served in many capacities in the public schools having taught all grades from one through the graduate school, mathematics consultant, high school principal, and assistant superintendent for instruction. She has served on an authorship team for major elementary mathematics textbook series.
Her experiences provided insight to convince her that the manner in which young children are initially introduced to the concept of numbers presents confusion and many children decide very early that mathematics is confusing thus difficult and start to believe that they cannot do mathematics.
For the past 4 decades she has developed and taught her approach to introducing young children to the concept of numbers. The traditional manner of using counting as the initial approach, she believes to be a problem. She has taught her method to parents and teachers over these years, but was convinced that she needed to design a way to go directly to the young child at approximately three and lead the child through the concepts of numbers, counting, addition, and subtraction. The applications of these concepts are traditionally taught by grade two. If a child is not having success with mathematics, Dr. Phelps has used her approach to remediate even older students.
Dr. C. Sue Phelps currently resides in Rocky Face, GA. She has three adult children and six grand children ages 5-11. Currently she is operating an educational consulting business.
-
AA degree Cumberland College
-
BA degree, University of Kentucky
-
Masters degree, The Ohio State University
-
Ph.D. degree, Georgia State University
Three degrees in three states over three decades.
C. Sue Phelps, Ph.D.
706-217-8422 Phone
phas@windstream.net E-mail