A New Series: On Teaching Math

Welcome to A Mother’s Thinking Love: Living Ideas, Lovingly Shared! Recently, I asked in The Toolshed if any mother-teachers there would find it helpful to hear a few reflections about teaching math from a fellow mother-teacher. My daughter is in Year 8 now, so I have a bit of experience under my belt. I’ve benefitted so much from other mother-teachers over the years, now I wanted to offer my help in some way. After a few “yes” responses, I decided to write a few things down. Those few things turned into an eleven post series and inspiration for more. In today’s post, I will briefly introduce the On Teaching Math series. Join me for: “A New Series: On Teaching Math”!

A Mother’s Thinking Love is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a way for websites to earn advertising revenues by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

A Little Explanation

This blog series is a little unique, I think. I document my journey from struggling math student to classroom math teacher to math mother-teacher in the homeschool. Throughout, I reflect on my time in the classroom primarily. Between reflections, I also talk about briefly philosophy, outline some principals, and give practical ideas. Although I am often writing about my classroom experience, the principals and methods apply directly to the homeschool. I hop in and out of both spaces throughout. I hope this adds some variety instead of confusion.

The One-Room Schoolhouse Homeschool

Although I have only one daughter, I advocate throughout the series for a one-room schoolhouse approach to teaching math in the homeschool. In several posts, I do explain why I think this can work based on my experience as a math classroom teacher. I wanted to be upfront about those facts, lest you think me to be writing from a place of inexperience and ignorance. Not only do I think this approach can work, I think it can bring joy and delight to math in the homeschool. I hope you will at least consider the idea.

Math Curriculum

You will not find any recommendations for a math curriculum in this series. I do mention one program, but I don’t necessarily advocate for its use as prescribed. If anything, I advocate for not using, or rethinking how you use, a math curriculum, especially in the elementary years. I do not provide a coherent system for what this looks like, but I think I provide enough principals to get you started, especially if you are motivated to set aside your curriculum and pursue communal math lessons in your homeschool. In the future, I hope to provide more support in this area, but I make no promises.

Principals & Philosophy

While I do outline several practical suggestions, I don’t recommend blindly following them without having guiding principals and a philosophy. When I was developing much of my approach to teaching math, I had several guiding principals. When I became a homeschooling mother-teacher, I immersed myself in educational philosophy. I read deeply from Charlotte Mason. In more recent years, I have been introduced to John Senior and Stratford Caldecott. I have read The Liberal Arts Tradition and am working my way through The Great Tradition. I am learning more and more about poetic knowledge and working through what that looks like as we come to the end of the middle years and turn our eyes to the high school years. Practical suggestions without philosophy and principals will always leave you frustrated.

Learning the “What”

While learning the “why”, namely philosophy and principals, behind methods of math teaching has been important, learning the “what” has been critical, too. During my first three years as a third grade math teacher, I did not have a curriculum: no teacher’s guides, no student textbooks, and no workbooks. This ended up being a blessing, but it meant that I had to put in work upfront to learn about third grade math.

I spent a lot of time studying the standards for math in my state from grades K-5. While I am not commending state math standards to you, far from it, I am saying that investing time in learning what children generally learn in a K-5, and even K-12, math education is beneficial. You begin to see how certain math concepts build and connect. I hope to develop a resource for this in the future, but, again, I make no promises.

Closing

All of the posts in the series have been edited and are available on the blog. For your convenience, they are all linked below. At the top of each post, there is a link that will bring you back here, so you can easily access the rest. Thank you for reading: “A New Series: On Teaching Math”! Leave any questions or comments below.

A Little Explanation