Charlotte Mason described the role of the teacher as being a guide in the lessons.
That involves a shift in our thinking sometimes, because usually that's not the way we were taught
when we were growing up. We were taught that the teacher is the fountainhead of all knowledge.
So what does it look like for the teacher, the parent, to be a guide? And especially in math
lessons? That's where we want to focus today. [gentle music] Welcome to the Simply Charlotte
Mason podcast. I'm Sonya Shafer. Joining me today is Richele Baburina. We're going to talk about
the teacher being a guide in the math lessons and how that looks. I love, as we've discussed this,
you had some great ideas of how the teacher, the parent, can guide the child in the math lessons.
So just talk for a minute about what that means and how a guide might be different from
what we assume the teacher's role should be —From standing at a board and delivering a lecture.
—Yes, yes. —So when I was thinking about this, I was just thinking about, because I love to hike,
so I was thinking about if I went someplace new to hike, someplace that was a little more strenuous,
maybe a little bit, had a larger scope than what I'm used to, then my little hikes around
the back of the house. I was thinking about what I would look for in a guide if, say, I were going
to the Swiss Alps or the Smoky Mountains. —And I love the ideas that we were discussing earlier,
so let's just walk through them, and you can share them with our listeners. All right? You talked
about how the guide's attitude is so important in that role as a guide. Talk a little bit about
that. —Right. So as the parent-teacher we might not have had a good experience with math ourselves
growing up, but that does doesn't mean we need to bring that experience into our child's math
lesson. So we want to have a good attitude toward math and discover, maybe, some of the wonder and
beauty of math alongside our child. We also don't ever want to give our child the idea that he is
somehow behind, because this really undermines a child's confidence. —Absolutely. And as a guide
for a hike, it's all about your attitude. You bring a positive attitude. It's not like, "Well,
I guess you can follow me if you can keep up." You know? —Wouldn't that be horrible? I mean we could
be on a hike with our children, a physical hike, and and they might begin with, "Oh, are we there
yet? How long is this going to take? I just want a snack," type of a thing. —Yeah. —But we don't want
to be the ones with poor attitude. And our good attitude really helps regulate the atmosphere of
the math lesson and brings our child into a good attitude as well. —And that doesn't mean that,
well what I'm thinking is, the guide might know there's a challenging part of this hike coming up,
and they might actually let you know that that's coming, but it's going to be presented
in a positive way. It's not like, "Oh here comes a tough one!" You know? "I hope you'll make it." —"I
don't know if you can do this." —Exactly, but it would be more, "We have a little challenge
coming up around the corner, and I'm going to be right here with you. We can do this. —"Let's see
what we can discover together." —Oh I like that. I like that. Now, that also can play
into another aspect of a guide that we've talked about, and that is not pushing our little hiker,
I mean, off a cliff. But also, I mean, up the path. —Can you imagine if your guide on a real
hike was just like trying to push you? Or trying to pull you up that hill and not
allow you to go at your own pace? Right? —They disappear around the corner, and it's like,
"Hello? Anyone?" And then they peek back, "Aren't you here yet?" —Yeah, definitely,
definitely. So we do want to go at the pace of the child in her math lesson. —Yeah.
Another aspect about that guide, as we've kind of alluded to,
that they know the path that they're on, and the whole idea of being prepared as a guide,
some, as you mentioned earlier, some parents might not have had a good experience with math,
so talk a little bit about how we can guide a student and be prepared as a guide
even if it's an area that's unfamiliar, perhaps, to us. —Yes. Sometimes it just means staying one
step ahead of our child in arithmetic. This could be as easy as simply reading through
the lesson in the book before you begin, so that you're prepared. You have any concrete objects or
manipulatives that you need. You have the the graph book or the math notebook that you need,
and that you've looked through the lesson ahead of time so that you're able to actually pay attention
to your child. —Yes, and may I mention that when you say read it ahead of time, we don't mean while
the child's sitting there waiting. —Correct? —Can you imagine if you started your hike up
the mountain and the guide pulled out the map, or the topographical map,
and just sat there and was like "Hmm. . ." —Like, "Turn it around." —That would not be a good guide.
—We also talked about this. Being prepared doesn't mean you have all of the answers,
this is a whiz for you, it's about, "We're in this together, sharing the effort. —Right. We want to
share in the effort to know, and that actually helps our child see that math is a worthy subject,
even if they don't plan on going into a STEM career field, it's a worthy subject to be studied.
There's something to be gained there, even if it's not for its utilitarian purposes. —And I think
it helps them to see that we are willing to put forth effort to keep learning ourselves as well.
That it's not, learning is not relegated to just school years; it should become a lifelong pursuit,
this thirst for more and more knowledge, yeah. —And just because we may have stopped at a certain
point in our own math lesson, doesn't mean that we can't have the adventure of going along with
our child on this mountainous realm. —That's true, that's true. We might think, "I can't
teach this particular level of math," but if you can just keep one step ahead, you might be able
to be that guide. What if, though, you get there, and you read that lesson ahead of time, and it is
not computing? What do you do then? —And believe me, I think that we all, no matter how much math
we have had in our lives, we do eventually reach a level, or we might reach a level, where there
is math that we have not come across before. —Yes. —So again, we share in the effort to know.
We could have a great textbook that can help us, but we can also reach out for
help. And this can come in in a few different ways. It might be by asking your husband, or
your own parent, or you might turn to a video. Not for your child to to watch the video,
but you might just find a few different directions that are coming at this concept that you can
employ then in your child's math lesson. —To help you grasp it, so then you can convey it to that
child as you are paying attention to that child. I love how you put that. That's so important about,
we're not just going through the lesson, we want to have enough of a grasp of the lesson that we
can focus on, "Is she understanding it? Is she, or is he, grasping it as well? I love that point.
—And as your child gets older, they they might be grasping things a little bit faster than you,
but to have a parent by his or her side becomes an important part of establishing a relationship. —So
talk a little bit about independent work and how that relates then, because you said having that
parent by your side. Is our goal to turn that child loose in the Swiss Alps? —Yes. —So what's
that look like? —You know, so math was never meant to be an actual, what we call, independent subject
in our own terminology that we grew up with. But the ability to work independently is a habit that
Charlotte Mason talks about. Now from the very first math lessons, we want our child to be
going in his own power. So even though we might be giving all of the questions orally, teaching them
how to write their numbers, the child is the one to do the work. —Yes. —We aren't going to help our
child over every difficulty. Can you imagine if your guide in the Swiss Alps came and scooped you
up and carried you over every difficulty? —"Oh, here's a rock. Here, let me carry you over that."
Yeah. —Right. And that guide would not be giving you the opportunity to work your muscles, to have
a feeling of exhilaration and accomplishment. —You'd pretty much become stagnant. That this
is as far as you can go, because you would not have the opportunity, as you said, to develop
more muscles and keep growing so you could take on bigger challenges. So you just kind of plateau
out. —Right, yeah. And we also don't want to constantly give our children crutches. So we don't
want to say, "Oh that's almost right." Because we want absolute truth to unfold before our child's
eyes, just like a guide would allow you the time to actually stop and take in the view,
or the time to look down and see the smallest alpine flower and study it. So we want our child
to be able to do the work, take the time that he needs, and take the time to kind of wonder at,
or grapple with these numbers. —So what does that look like as we go through the grades?
You said in the younger grades, we are giving the mental problems, we're doing it orally,
I mean, and the child is responding orally, so it's almost all together-work in those
younger grades. And I know as we go through the Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic series,
we start implementing a little bit of, "We've gone through the concept, and I noticed,
I can see, that the child has grasped it, and he feels confident with it," so, "Now
I'm going to give you a few of these problems to do independently." And I know it says in the book,
as soon as they're done, "Now I'm available; we're going to go over it together immediately
to see if there are any issues that we need to resolve or clarifications we need to give."
That's about fourth grade or so. —Right. We begin that at about fourth grade and again
you do want to go at the pace of your child. If your child is not fluent at reading and writing,
then they should not be given a lot of independent work in that way, because the reading and writing
mechanics are going to hinder them. It's not a reading and writing lesson. But as the child is
fluent, or gaining fluency in reading and writing, it's important for the child to be able to notate,
to be able to read the problem. So we kind of have a target that we're looking at. So when
we introduce the new concept, and we work with our children with that new concept, and we see
that they have gained some confidence and ability and understanding working with this new concept,
then we can give our child some problems to work independently. Now, it's immediately afterward.
Then we want the child to bring his work to us, so that we can look at it and make sure that that our
child has not gotten any wrong ideas. —Got off the track somewhere. —And that's just like going up a
mountain with your guide. If we get off a mountain path, it could actually be dangerous. We want to
have that realization, so we don't get completely lost, that we have somehow gotten off the path,
and, with the parent as a guide, they can see that almost immediately. At this point, if we're
mountain hiking, we're going to immediately turn around and follow our steps back. In the
math lesson, we're just going to take a few steps back to see where our child got off in his or her
understanding. Make sure the ground is firm under her feet, and then we're going to continue up the
mountain. —Together. —Together. —And then doing some independent work as they have grasped it.
That's around in book four or so, where whatever age the child is when they get to that point.
Then does that continue through the rest of the upper grades? Are we still a guide? I guess I'm
asking, or are we, is our goal to get to the point where we just hand the child the book and say,
"Here, go do this whole book this year."? —So that is not the goal, and it is never the goal, even in
other subjects in the Charlotte Mason education. Just as you would introduce a new author or
introduce a new book to your child, you'll be there for the introduction of a new concept
all the way throughout. But again, as your child has comfort and ability with working
with the new concept, then they're allowed to do that independent work on their own,
and any review can be taken independently as well by that point. —That makes sense.
And that will gradually increase as the child gets older, I'm assuming. —It does. But again,
because math specifically is a subject where it can be easy to get off the path, this is why we
want to remain available and be attentive to our child. It's actually going to take a lot less
time to turn around and go back to where a child has lost their understanding if we're with them,
then it would take if you handed your child a textbook and then a month later you began going
through their worksheets or their written work and realized that they don't understand it. Now you're
going to have to go back a lot further to find out where they got off the path. —That's a good point,
and I know for some parents this seems like it's going to take a lot of time now. "You mean I've
got to introduce every new concept? Why do I have to do that? I don't have the time to do that."
How much time are we talking? I mean, I understand, it varies according to concept
and according to child, but we're not talking hours and hours every day, right? —Not at all. So
even in the high school years, the math lesson is never above 30 minutes, and so it is really maybe
going to take, now of course each concept could be different, it could it could take a little
bit more, but we're talking about 10 minutes, because we don't advance until our student has
has concrete understanding underneath them. As we said, the ground is firm underneath their feet,
and so every step up that mountain is dependent on the steps before, which they should have secured,
you should have secured their understanding, and so at this point, since they already understand
what came before, then it's probably going to take about 10 minutes to introduce a new
concept. —I think we can all give 10 minutes a day to each child for a math lesson, and, as you said,
in the long run, it will save you time. —It will. —I love that. This also kind of plays into another
point that you mentioned, and that is a good guide pays attention to those who are hiking with him.
And I think it is important for the teacher, as a guide, to pay attention to that child,
as you said, where they got off the path, but even more than that, right? —Right. We
should be paying attention to our child's stamina level. —Oh yeah. —So if we need to take a break,
if we need water going up the mountain, or if we need to just switch to to mental math,
or if we need to switch to a different subject altogether. So we should be paying attention to
our child also when it comes to manipulatives. If a child is getting bored using manipulatives,
or balks at them, then it's time to put those away, and they can be gotten
out whenever they're needed again. So this leads me to an important point, and that is,
when you're going to be going on a hike, we want to be prepared, but we don't want to weigh
ourselves or our hikers down with unnecessary gadgets. —Yes. —So I remember going on a hike;
it was a trail in Black Mountain called Rattlesnake Trail. —Oh this sounds encouraging.
—There were a couple of different types of hikers, and there was a family who their
children even had their scooters along. Well those scooters had to be dropped off pretty
early in the hike. —Yes. —Yes, and then there were the hikers that had huge backpacks full of
every gadget they could possibly think would be necessary. Well as prepared as they were,
they were actually weighed down by the amount of objects that they had. So when we're going
to be doing math lessons with our student ,we're going to be using manipulatives, we only want to
give them what's needed, and we don't need this expensive gear. We just need our everyday objects.
So going up a mountain, you just might need one good hiking stick and a big bottle of water.
And with your children, you need a variety of manipulatives, but very simple everyday objects.
—I love this comparison that we've been talking about: the guide on the mountains as compared to
the teacher as a guide in the math lessons. And I think that picture is going to help a
lot of our listeners wrap their minds around what it means that the teacher should act as
a guide in the math lessons, so thanks a lot for your experience hiking and sharing it with us and
how it looks in a math lesson as well. —And I hope everyone just learns to enjoy the mountain
views alongside their child. —Oh that's a good point. We can get so focused on the trail that we
forget to lift our heads and look at the scenery. Good point. Thanks. If you enjoyed this podcast,
be sure to subscribe. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us. [gentle music]