By Doug Belden

Two years ago, when they team-taught a class of new Hmong immigrants, Lisa Hoover and Sai Thao would speak to each other in English if they didn't want the kids to understand.

But one girl began catching on, so they switched to spelling. That worked until the child figured out what they were doing. She'd decode their messages and repeat them in Hmong to her classmates.

"We're switching to Spanish now," Hoover remembers telling Sai Thao.

The girl, Mai Vang Lee, was then in fourth grade at St. Paul's Randolph Heights Elementary. She's now in sixth, and in those 2 1/2 years she has gone from entry-level English literacy to the stage just below fluency, reading at a fifth-grade level.

Last month, she was part of a five-member team from Randolph Heights that placed third in the regional Math Masters competition.

"She's one of the rare examples of a kid who beats the averages," Hoover said of Mai Vang Lee.

"She catches on so fast, it's just phenomenal," said Lynn Meixell, the school's gifted services specialist. "She is truly a remarkable young girl."

Mai Vang Lee and her family arrived in Minnesota in May 2005 from a refugee camp in Thailand. She was part of a group of more than 1,500 Hmong refugees who enrolled in St. Paul schools over a span of about two years from 2004 through 2006.

Her teachers credit the girl's parents with encouraging literacy and supporting school activities of Mai Vang Lee and her siblings, but they say her unusual progress is due in large part to what Hoover calls her "natural curiosity."

She's always coming to Hoover to ask what a word means, and she doesn't accept vague generalities for an answer. "She wants me to nail down the definition of that word for her," Hoover said.

"She has that self-motivation," said Sai Thao. "I think she has a goal set for herself."

Mai Vang Lee said she had three years of schooling in Thailand. There wasn't a lot of math instruction, she said, and what there was consisted mainly of copying down what the teacher wrote on the board.

At Randolph Heights, Mai Vang Lee joined the advanced math group this year. That group of 17 students made up the three teams Randolph Heights sent to last month's Math Masters competition.

On the practice tests leading up to the tournament, Mai Vang Lee had the second-highest individual score in the group. At the tournament, she finished just below the middle of the pack, 76th out of 120.

She said the competition was frustrating at first, but it got easier. She found herself having to read the questions numerous times. "I know how to read them, but I don't know what they mean," she said.

In addition to Math Masters, Mai Vang Lee has played flute in the school band at Randolph Heights, served on the student council and emceed the talent show.

Next year, she plans to attend Washington Middle School. But before that, she'll spend the summer in Breakthrough St. Paul, a free program that offers academic enrichment to motivated, low-income middle-school students.

She was one of several students at Randolph Heights who took an application for Breakthrough — which requires an essay, recommendations, a parent statement and other work — but one of only two who actually completed the process and turned the forms in, said Randolph Heights Principal Nancy Flynn.

"That kind of gives you an idea of her motivation," Flynn said.

Doug Belden can be reached at 651-228-5136.