On Teaching Math: Part Ten

Welcome to A Mother’s Thinking Love: Living Ideas, Lovingly Shared! In my last post, I discussed where I land in the modern Math Wars. If you haven’t read it, I do recommend you go back to it and the previous posts in the series. It’s not that I think any post is incredibly profound, it’s just that I have told a story throughout. The story makes the most sense within its context. In today’s post, I want to wrap up this series and discuss my reluctance to write these posts at all. Join me for: “On Teaching Math: Part Ten”!

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LINK TO THE REST OF THE POSTS IN THE SERIES

Why I Didn’t Want to Write 

Over the last eleven years, I have not shared much in regards to my ideas about math. This was true when I was a classroom teacher, and it has remained true as a homeschool mom. In our years of homeschooling, I have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of math curriculums available. They are shiny, organized, written by professionals, and, usually, expensive. What could I have to offer that wasn’t already out there?

As I have spent time reading post after post from mother-teachers lamenting about math curriculums, however, I have always wanted to help. Very rarely did I ever post a comment with any advice, let alone write a multi-post blog series on the topic. I just did not want to add to the overwhelm and noise that was already out there.

Looking to the Future

Over the last couple of years, however, I have been looking to the future. This has required me to reflect on the past. My daughter is in Year 8 now. It was easy to teach math with my ideas in the elementary years. But as I reached the middle, and looked to the high school years, I wavered in my convictions at times. Sure, homeschool families may approach math differently in the early years but most middle and high school curriculums looked the same. If I was going to continue to pursue these ideas that I held so dearly, I needed to articulate why I had been approaching math this way all along.

Freedom & Delight

Although no one asked me to, I decided to write my journey down. I thought it would be a short exercise. Little did I realize, I would spend three hours writing one Friday night, when I had the house to myself, and only scratch the surface. Now, here we are in part ten of the series. Besides doing a lot of rambling, you may be wondering about my intentions.

Again, I did not want to add to the math chatter just to hear myself speak. There’s so much of it out there already. No, I do not think I am a math expert. I was a struggling math student myself, remember. My intention is to bring freedom and delight to math in the homeschool. I want to give confidence to the mother-teacher who is questioning whether or not she wants to go down this path of purchasing the latest shiny math curriculum. I also want to give hope to the mom who may not have the ability to purchase new math curriculums every year. 

Future Plans

At this time, I don’t have any grand future plans. I have considered creating some resources with practical ideas. Even if it is just a list, I think I am likely to do this eventually. Also, I would like to develop a more robust philosophy behind these ideas. As I have read from Charlotte Mason, John Senior, Stratford Caldecott, and books like The Liberal Arts Tradition, I have seen bits and pieces of my approach. If you have read from all, or some, of these authors, maybe you can see those threads too. 

For now, however, I make no promises. I hope you have enjoyed “On Teaching Math: Part Ten”. If you have read through this entire series: THANK YOU! I hope you have benefitted from it in some way. If you have any comments, questions, or requests for future posts, please leave them in the comments below!