Latest / The Christy-Faith Show / Ep. 110 - What Is the Science of Math and Why Does It Matter? // Nathan King

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Ep. 110 - What Is the Science of Math and Why Does It Matter? // Nathan King · The Christy-Faith Show

• 0:00
  Christy-Faith: There's a new term making its way through the education world right now, and if it follows the same path as the last one that was very similar, it's going to land in every homeschool Facebook group, every curriculum fair, every co op conversation, and every math curriculum website within the next two years. And it's gaining traction because math scores nationally are at historic lows. And researchers, educators, and parents are starting to ask the same question. Why? How confident are you that your kids are being taught math the right way?
• 0:30
  And is there even a right way? And those are not just rhetorical questions. In all my years coaching families and in Thrive Homeschool Community, I have found that math is the subject that keeps moms up at night more than any other subject. Whether things are going well or not, because it matters. Every child deserves a solid math education.
• 0:50
  And math isn't really something that you can set aside for now and come back to later. It builds on itself. Education week, a publication that's been covering education and research for decades, just ran a story titled debates over math teaching are heating up. They could affect classrooms. The debate they're describing is this.
• 1:08
  Researchers are now asking whether the way math has been taught, not just in schools, but full stop for a very long time, is actually working. You've heard of the science of reading. Right? That movement swept across the nation, and it changed how the world taught kids how to read. Well, researchers are now having the same conversation about math.
• 1:29
  Same energy, same urgency, and same question underneath it all. Have we been doing this wrong, and what does the research actually say? The movement is called the science of math. It is controversial, it is contested, and it is already arriving in your world. So today, I wanna make sure we can make sense of it and ultimately make the best decisions for our homeschools.
• 1:50
  I thought a great person to bring on today to discuss this is Nathan King with CTC Math. Who better than someone who lives and breathes and works math? So whether you are in the middle of a math struggle in your home right now, you're evaluating curriculum, or just someone who wants to make sure what they're doing is right and good for their kids, this episode is for you. Nathan, welcome to the show today. Before we dive into the science of math, would you take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
• 2:29
  Nathan King: So my name is Nathan King, and, I work as the head of marketing for CTC Math. And, they are a fantastic organization. They're actually the original name of the company is Maths Online because in Australia and in Great Britain and in the other places of the British Commonwealth, they say maths, not math. And so, but they are they are part of the maths online, kind of brand collection. And so CTC Math is The US, branding of that.
• 2:58
  And so I'm involved in in marketing, that to homeschools and to schools across the country and around the world.
• 3:05
  Christy-Faith: You are a great person to have on the show today because you're currently pursuing a master's degree in, what is it, curriculum and instruction?
• 3:11
  Nathan King: Yeah, absolutely. So and and interesting, it was so apropos when when you actually sent me the information about what we were talking about today. I was fascinated. I'm actually doing my final projects in the master's field and it's called Capstone. And as I work through Capstone, my theme and kind of the research question that I'm engaging is how we can help teachers who have something called math anxiety.
• 3:38
  They struggle with math anxiety. I didn't know prior to this, I didn't know this was a thing. This is something that is researched because so many people struggle with math anxiety and teachers are not immune, right? And so it's something like one in four teachers actually struggle with this. And when you're talking about primary teachers, it's like up to forty percent.
• 3:57
  I mean, it's huge. And the not scary thing, but just the reality, the sobering reality is that students who have teachers who have math anxiety themselves often develop math anxiety. And it's just this difficulty they have with doing something that God created that is such a beautiful part of his creation. And so I wanna help where I can. So this is this is an exciting, conversation for me to have with you.
• 4:22
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. It's been a couple of years since I went over that research about math anxiety, and that so relates to us. And I think in particular with girls, don't know about you mama listening right now, but were you ever told that you know, did you ever have that internal monologue with yourself? I'm not good at math, which happens a lot with girls in our society.
• 4:43
  That's something to investigate in itself. But, you know, we are homeschooling our kiddos, and a lot of us are doing it feeling pretty insecure with math. Now, today's topic is on this new term that's coming out now called the science of math. Kinda like the science of reading. It might sweep the nation like the science of reading stuff did.
• 5:04
  I don't know, but I wanted to get ahead of it, and you were the perfect person to ask on to do that today. But I wanna start with the term itself because this is going to be new to a lot of parents listening today. What exactly is the science of math, and why does it have momentum right now?
• 5:21
  Nathan King: So there was actually an well, not organization, a movement, if you will, called Science of Reading. Because so many people were saying, man, our students are not doing a very good job of reading and how can we help them? And then some researchers are going, well, we have some amazing research that indicates what works really well with reading and you guys just aren't doing it, right? And so they started bringing out this evidence based practice or EPB, that's kind of the term in terms of reading. And it's really helped to shape how we teach reading because there was ideas that people had about how they wanted reading to be taught that actually didn't work.
• 5:54
  And of course the research indicates that phonetics is the way to go in that rather than doing whole word or these other kinds of things. And so they started looking at the research of it, the quantitative data that actually showed what was actually working in the classroom, what actually produced real learning. And as a result, they got some better reading methodologies to teach reading to students, to help them to learn. And so of course, this then eventually translated into researchers asking the same question about math because math is so dismal. It's abysmal, I guess is really what I should say.
• 6:28
  I mean, think it's fourth graders, for fourth graders, like the current stats is something like 60% of them nationwide are not hitting minimum thresholds. And when they get to eighth grade, like 70%. Mean, it's just really bad. We could chalk some of that up maybe to like the COVID gaps that they kind of developed. But at the same time, I mean, the reality is we're dealing with what we're dealing with.
• 6:49
  And so what do we do about that? And I was listening to some people talking about this particular issue and they said, we don't really have time to just kind of postulate ideas that maybe this will work. We have research already and students need to learn and they need to be able to do math because like we've already talked about, with that math anxiety, if a student fails over and over again at math and feels like they're a failure and they're not, right? Anyone can learn math, but they feel like they're a failure. They might be set up for this kind of really sad situation for the rest of their lives where they they don't feel like they can they can contribute to the discussion in math.
• 7:27
  And and the reality is is they can, and there's ways of doing that, but they might feel like they can't. So that's that's a that's a sad state. We don't want that.
• 7:33
  Christy-Faith: Do you think it's a pretty similar parallel, or do you think there's a breakdown, between the science of reading and the science of math?
• 7:40
  Nathan King: I think that there's a strong corollary because when you're talking about pedagogy, which like the way that we speak educationally to students, andragogy is adults, So pedagogy is to kids. And so when we speak about that, there are commonalities between the different subject matters. Now, different subjects are handled differently to some degree because math, have some skillset, right? Whereas maybe in social studies, have you know, more maybe some facts about, you know, history or that kind of thing. So there is some differences there, but in terms of the broad scale of, you know, some, you know, evidence based practice, what works in terms of learning, there are a lot of correlations between the different subject areas.
• 8:22
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. And I remember with the science of reading, when I was researching all of that stuff, you know, we used to do reading intervention at our center and we got amazing results. But I remember, you know, things get trendy, like whole word method or, you know, guessing by context and things like that. And they realized, oh, wait a minute. We're actually teaching kids to read like a dyslexic reads.
• 8:44
  Why are we doing that? Right? And so Right. And so I wanna I wanna know what do you think? And we'll we'll get deeper into this later, but just from a high level view, there was a lot that went wrong with the science, you know, before the science of reading, and it was catastrophic, the results.
• 9:02
  What do you think in, like, the last twenty or so years they have gotten wrong about math instruction that they're trying to rectify now?
• 9:10
  Nathan King: Yeah. I mean, so when you when you start getting into educate education is susceptible to fads. I mean,
• 9:17
  Christy-Faith: people like It's so annoying.
• 9:19
  Nathan King: Yeah. Absolutely. And my wife
• 9:22
  Christy-Faith: is talking about And also, like, since when are is it are we you know, when are children guinea pigs? Like, this isn't yeah. Anyway, keep going.
• 9:30
  Nathan King: No. Absolutely. And I I think some of that some of that has to do sometimes with wishful thinking on the part of some advocates or people who maybe do research, not quantitatively, but maybe qualitatively. Maybe they look at, hey, it worked for this kid over here, so maybe I'm gonna make that broad scale, that kind of thing. And I also, I mean, I do wanna, I guess, kind of caution us to a degree.
• 9:57
  Most people I think who are having these conversations really do care about kids. Okay, even though I'm gonna disagree with certain people and their formulation of ideas, I do think that a lot of them have, they really do care. So we don't want to, we're not trying to paint anyone in a bad character light, but I do think there's some problems with some of the thinking. And perhaps in an attempt to serve students well, maybe people have made some leaps that maybe they shouldn't make. And so some of these ideas, I think, come out of a general foundation of believing that they're they're actually probably more of an attitude or a a philosophy that regards the creativity of the human mind.
• 10:37
  The untrained human mind is somehow sacrosanct, is somehow, you know, amazing and incredible that if I was to train someone in a certain way, that ruins their ability to actually be creative. But what we find is that the human mind when properly trained, when well trained, actually has more creativity because you have more to bring to the conversation. Right? If if you talk to a five year old, you say, be creative. I mean, they might come up with some things that you've never seen before.
• 11:02
  I suppose that's possible, but they're gonna be goofy and kind of silly. From a very objective standpoint, nothing that you're going to wanna publish or put on anything other than a refrigerator because you love them, right? But if you train someone well and you give them the tools to be able to express themselves, whether it's mathematically or whether it's in writing, whether it's in music, you give them those tools, suddenly they can create something that's really objectively beautiful. Right? And I said I said objectively.
• 11:31
  I meant objectively beautiful. And and and and so doing, you then give them tools that they can then be creative and create things that you would want to see, that you'd want to listen to, that you'd want to hear. Right? And so, I I do think that some of this kind of comes out of that desire for humanity to be able to create things on its own without training. And, and I disagree with that viewpoint because I don't think it actually works.
• 11:57
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. And I mean, so much is running through my mind, like secular humanism and putting man on a pedestal over God and all of these things. And you're what you're speaking very classically right now, actually. Right? Like, the foundations of a classical education, and that's kind of my background.
• 12:13
  That's where I started. I'm pretty eclectic now in classical in certain areas. I think classical is more of a posture. I don't think classical is a curriculum. But, but, yeah, I mean, that's ultimately you're not gonna ask a five year old their opinion on, you know, Middle East the Middle East crisis.
• 12:29
  They don't have the foundational knowledge, the wisdom, or anything to be able to have an opinion that is, dare I say, worthy of listening to, but actually I'm not wrong. And I think that's so important. Right? Like, my girls are in art right now at our co op, and we hire a art teacher to come in, and she teaches them excellently. She teaches them perspective.
• 12:49
  She teaches them these beautiful foundations. And you know what? They're really proud of what they're producing. And so I think there is so much there to, like, that foundational knowledge. So going back to the math conversation.
• 13:02
  So when, when researchers are looking at this, how math should actually be taught, what does ideal instruction look like? And what are some of those non negotiables that they're asking teachers to look at again?
• 13:19
  Nathan King: Sure. So like the science of math specifically, they advocate explicit instruction. And it parallels how Math Online and CTC Math does do. We do the same thing. And the idea is that you're going to be giving incremental instruction.
• 13:36
  You're gonna be doing modeling of how to do the math thing, right? So you're gonna be modeling that. You're gonna be allowing the students to engage with that to a degree. Mean, you may have some conversation discussions, but then you're gonna give them lots of practice, right? And you may coach them through that practice.
• 13:49
  It doesn't mean that Explicit instruction does not mean that you don't have interaction with the students, but but it does mean that you're you're doing it in a certain order. And once the student understands that content, then you can ask them to do other things with that content. Right?
• 14:05
  Christy-Faith: It do feel about ask a kid who can't read how they feel about Hamlet?
• 14:10
  Nathan King: Absolutely. Or how do you you know, if if the really good example is music. Like, give a violin to some student who isn't trained with violin and say, go make some great music. You know, go do go do Mozart. Go do, you know, whatever.
• 14:21
  It does that doesn't that doesn't even compute. You train them how to use the thing, then they can make something amazing, right? Yes. And so in the same way, that's what CTC Math would advocate. And we're definitely against the antithesis of that, which would be like basically a inquiry based learning where we aren't giving them the resources, the explicit instruction on how to do the thing.
• 14:43
  Instead, we're having them discover those things. And the idea is that once discover how to do something, it's yours. And so I understand where someone's coming from on that. But the reality is that we can ask someone to do project based learning or inquiry based kinds of things only if they have the tools to do those things. You give them the tools, now they can do some cool stuff.
• 15:06
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. I remember back in my when I was in graduate school in my early twenties to make ends meet, I would tutor kids. And and I remember going over to this this kid's house, he really struggled in all sorts of areas, including academics. And I remember opening up the math book. I'm not gonna mention the the name of the curriculum, but it was used at a private Christian school.
• 15:25
  It wasn't a Christian curriculum, but it was at a private Christian school that was highly academic and rigorous. And I remember looking at this third grader and the question is like, what are different a concept he had never seen before. What are different ways you could go about solving this problem? And this kid was just, you know, tears. I'm just like, can we just teach this kid some basics here?
• 15:48
  Like, he doesn't even have the basics in order to even attempt this math page that is just homework. And it's it's kind of nuts, this kind of inquiry based stuff. But why why do you think they went in that direction? I'm just so curious on you. That's a little bit of a curveball.
• 16:04
  I'm just curious because of your background and your current course of studies. How did we get here? Homeschooling four kids means I'm juggling roughly 24 different subjects at any given time. And a few years back during a particularly busy season, I hit a wall. I needed some serious help with the heavy lifting of teaching everything myself and managing schedules for four kids.
• 16:24
  That's when I found BJU Press Homeschool and we've loved their courses so much that we keep going back. Some families use them for everything and love it. I use them for certain subjects. Either way, total mental load relief. Here's what my mornings look like now.
• 16:38
  Let us take science for example. My three girls do that one together. They fire up the lesson taught by a real teacher, well produced, actual teaching, not just click through busy work. And I sit there with my coffee, watch them, or make breakfast, and we discuss the big ideas. Every BJU Press homeschool course prioritizes critical thinking, a biblical worldview, and hands on learning.
• 16:58
  I just guide the conversation and pick which activity or pages or projects we want to do, and everything's already planned out. They have an online platform included for you called the homeschool hub, and it keeps everyone on track, both me and my kids, without micromanaging or nagging. And when I have questions, I call my homeworks consultant. These people don't just help you get set up. They're available for you whenever you need them.
• 17:20
  It's like having a homeschool expert on speed dial. Go to bjupresshomeschool.com or click the link in the show notes to find out more. People are always curious what curriculum I use for my own family, and honestly, it changes. We've tried a lot over the years. Some work for a season and some completely missed the mark, but there is one that's stuck, CTC math.
• 17:40
  It's a full k to 12 online math curriculum and it's won oodles of awards for a reason. It's just that good. I use it for all four of my kids and they couldn't be more different when it comes to math. Finding one curriculum that actually works for all of them, that's been nearly impossible. You know that pit in your stomach when you realize the curriculum that you just invested in isn't working again?
• 18:03
  Yeah. That was us until this one. The genius behind CTC math is that it's adaptive. The questions adjust to each kid's level in real time. So they're always challenged but never crushed.
• 18:15
  And mama, it does the teaching and grading for us. Yes. You heard that right. That's a homeschool mom's dream. Well, especially for me when it comes to math.
• 18:23
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• 18:51
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• 19:03
  This one stuck for us, and I have a feeling it's gonna stick for you too.
• 19:07
  Nathan King: Yeah. I mean, I I and again, I I really think that it comes from the idea that I want the human mind and the human brain to be able to create something on its own.
• 19:15
  Christy-Faith: Yeah.
• 19:16
  Nathan King: Right? There's the two Latin terms, creo and Invenio. Creo deals with creation, really from ex nihilo, right, without anything. And then you have Invenio, is like, look, I took the stuff that I have and I reworked it and then was able to create something, produce something that looked different. And Invenio probably is a better representation of how we actually do things.
• 19:40
  You give me the tools, give me the words or the math problems or, you know, whatever the case may be, I can reorganize those. I can I can figure out how to use those things in a way that is perhaps novel? Right? But but I don't do that out of nothing. I have an idea that I based it on, or I have preconceived notions or I have schemas that I've drawn from, right?
• 20:01
  I mean, these ideas and templates, that kind of thing. That all comes together, right? In Venio, not in Creo. Creo is something that humans don't do. We have the stuff here that we work with.
• 20:13
  And so I think that idea of coming to whether it's inquiry based learning or there's other things that go in that territory, I suspect that that comes from a desire for those kinds of things to be true. And there is a level where you and I are adults. If you gave us an inquiry based problem to deal with, hey, mean, Christy, let's figure out how to go to the moon. Like we can start to attack that. I mean, that's a pretty big, you know, jump there, but but we could we could attack that.
• 20:42
  But but we have all the tools. We have so many things that we can actually draw from. Give that to an eight year old. What? That doesn't that isn't that doesn't even compute.
• 20:50
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. So interestingly, so the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics came out hard against this movement, and Education Week reported that they called the science of math approach impoverished. That is pretty strong. They said that it would regulate students to mimicking their teacher. So quote, you can't see my air quotes, mimicking their teacher.
• 21:12
  And then they went further and called explicit instruction a pedagogy of poverty. Those are pretty strong words. So why do you think there is this resistance? Why would they call it impoverished?
• 21:26
  Nathan King: Right. Why is there zealotry against
• 21:30
  Christy-Faith: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Nathan King: You know, methodology? Right? Right. Why is that the case? Yeah.
• 21:33
  And and and, of course, I don't I don't know, you know, the deep the depths of their hearts as to why that would be specifically. It may be that the NCSM is they may have a different viewpoint of explicit instruction than what explicit instruction actually is. And they have a viewpoint that's extremely narrow, perhaps their definition is extremely narrow. And of course, they're not here to defend themselves, I can't say that specifically. But I think that if they have a very narrow definition, they might be thinking that explicit instruction is impoverished because it is requiring, you know, rote answers to information.
• 22:06
  Not just modeling on the board and saying, okay, now you try it. Hey, oh, let's try it a little bit differently. Hey, here's a different strategy. You know, there can be a whole lot of interaction on explicit It doesn't have to be something that resembles an 1880s classroom, right? It doesn't have to look exactly that way.
• 22:24
  And as we've already mentioned, once you have the tools, perhaps you can give the students some sort of real world scenario to engage with because now they can have transfer of that information to another context, but they have to have the information to transfer. They've gotta be able to have the tool to go there. And so there is this sense in which the NCSM is perhaps building a straw man argument, right? Where they're saying, look, this is what this is. And at the risk of myself building a straw man argument, they don't actually really explain what they say in that report.
• 22:59
  They don't give you a very strong definition of what they mean by explicit instruction. They say, oh, it's impoverished, but but what exactly are they defining explicit instruction as? And more to the point, do they have, evidence based materials that would indicate, they would say like guided inquiry, discovery based learning, these kinds of things. Do they have research that would indicate that that is quantitative in nature? And actually inside that report, they actually attack the science of math for using two quantitative of methods.
• 23:32
  They don't want to use quantitative, they wanna use qualitative methods. And qualitative, just for any of your learners that don't know, qualitative and quantitative, quantitative is numbers, right? Thirty percent of the students were able to achieve, blah, blah, blah, right? That kind of thing. Qualitative is like, well, we saw a lot of kids who engaged, they liked it, they said they liked it, that kind of a thing.
• 23:51
  Qualitative is not necessarily going to be as hard line, right, in terms of the data and what you can draw from it. And as a result, is not generalizable to the larger population, not in the same way that quantitative data is. And so if you're going to be, as a researcher, actually using data, it needs to be quantitative because you're trying to deal with a larger scale of population. With the NCSM, they are paid a lot of money for their professional development that deals with inquiry based learning and these kinds of things. If the data didn't support inquiry based learning, if it was found that that was actually not helpful to students, then there may be some jobs on the line or you may have to eat a lot of crow in terms of what you've been talking about for the last several decades or whatever.
• 24:38
  If you said, man, this isn't working like we thought it was. Wasn't doing what we wanted to do. And the reality is if we're gonna have a broader conversation, NCSM and and other like organizations, it's not the only organization that that that advocates this. But if you're going to be talking about some of those things, it may be a question of cart before the horse or horse before the cart. Right?
• 24:57
  It may not be that it illegitimate to have real world application or discovery based learning or these kinds of things with people in the right context. And that's another conversation. I'm not making a claim there. I'm just saying that there may be a better conversation. But to whole cloth say, well, explicit instruction is not gonna be of value here.
• 25:19
  That's going down the same path of what they attack the science of math people doing, right? They're saying, oh, you're making a whole cloth, you know, generalization. Well, aren't you doing the same thing?
• 25:28
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• 26:00
  LearningRx is backed by thirty five years of research, and their results are transformative. Use code HOME 50 for $50 off your cognitive skills assessment. Go to learningrx.com or click the link in the show notes. Yeah. Okay.
• 26:13
  So and I love philosophy, but I know what you're thinking right now, mom listening. You're like, what does this mean for my kitchen table? Right? Well, when we're searching for math curriculum, you know, we're at a convention or we're searching online and we're trying to figure out what math curriculum is going to work for our kids. But also, you know, we coach so many women in Thrive Homeschool Community and I'm asked on a pretty regular basis, is this math curriculum good?
• 26:39
  Is this math curriculum good? Is this math curriculum good? Well, a lot of them I know, and I can say, yes, I recommend that or no, I don't. One thing I never do is I never will put my name behind a math curriculum that's new if I can't figure out who wrote it. And I'm having that trouble right now in the homeschool space, with a couple of them.
• 26:59
  It's like, I need I need to know, like, what philosophy is this from? You know, people can sell the sizzle. Oh, we're spiral. Oh, we're mastery based. What let's first let's unpack what spiral and mastery means.
• 27:13
  I have a very strong opinion on this, but I wanna hear So your opinion
• 27:18
  Nathan King: there's this guy named Bruner, all right? He's the one that kind of brought about, I don't remember, think it's like cognitive development. The name of it is escaping me, but basically he advocated for spiral learning. And part of the reason for that is because he said that people will go through specific stages, right? In their development.
• 27:39
  One of those the kind of this iconic phase where they're starting to kind of understand what things mean. And then this symbolic where you're able to go a little bit more on the abstract. So you're bringing content back to the student over and over again in more and more complex ways, right? And over time, he kind of said, over time we can do some gradual release process where I keep giving this to you and I bring it to you again and again and again, and over time I'm moving back away from it and then it's all yours, right? That kind of an idea.
• 28:07
  Bruner, my understanding, I don't know him deeply. I don't know the material deeply, but he does seem to be a bit old school in his thinking. And he was kind of earlier in some of the educational psychologists. And so I think some of his concepts, which was research based, okay? It was research based stuff.
• 28:26
  But I think some of his conclusions don't resonate. And some of the other educational psychologists helped us to to see that a little bit differently. So but that's where the spiral learning kinda came from as as far as I understand.
• 28:36
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. And while not listening, so spiral is where you don't learn a the theory is you don't learn a math concept to mastery. You kind of touch on it, go to something else, revisit it later. And every time you revisit it, you go a little bit deeper to have further understanding. And then what will come out of that is a person who has a really good math sense or or is really good at math, but there are entire curricula built on the philosophy of a spiral method.
• 29:06
  And then Right. There is so define what mastery is then, Nathan.
• 29:10
  Nathan King: So mastery is you go into a subject matter and understand there's gonna be some crossover here, right? There is some crossover because you do have to review things, you know, and so that can look spiral. And that is spiral review. Yes. So the question is, wait, is spiral learning or is it spiral review?
• 29:26
  Alright. That's that's a question.
• 29:28
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. That's that's last one.
• 29:29
  Nathan King: You know where I'm going.
• 29:30
  Christy-Faith: Yes. Because because I will tell you because, you know, we've been using CTC Math for years.
• 29:34
  Nathan King: Yes.
• 29:34
  Christy-Faith: But something that I do is we do new lessons all the days of the week. And then Friday is where, you know, we go into that parent portal and we assign the kids cumulative reviews. Right?
• 29:45
  Nathan King: Absolutely. So that it'll come spiral review.
• 29:47
  Christy-Faith: That's exactly what it is. Yes. So every
• 29:50
  Nathan King: Cart before the horse. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean or or horse before the cart.
• 29:53
  We want the horse before the cart, right?
• 29:55
  Christy-Faith: Yes.
• 29:55
  Nathan King: Okay, so mastery, when you're doing mastery, you're gonna be actually engaging with a subject or content matter, maybe even a central question, something like that. And you're going to explore it. You're gonna really get it really, so that you understand it, you know that you know that you know it, right? And then once that happens, then you can move on to the next thing, right? But often what happens in educational circles in public schools, and I think certainly Christy maybe when we were kids and I say we because I think I'm quite a bit older than you are.
• 30:25
  But even so, I think that in the public school context, a lot of times we were exposed to material, right? And then we moved on. And we exposed to material and we moved on. And we kept doing that throughout our entire school career. And then you look back and you say, how much of that did I really retain?
• 30:44
  Right? Mastery says, look, I'm going to be hitting this material and then I'm going to add some more, but I'm gonna keep on doing the same thing I was doing before, right? And then I'm gonna add some more and keep on doing so so that my my schema, which is the collection of everything I know about something continues to grow and I retain what I first learned. Right? The problem with mastery learning is it takes a little bit more time, right?
• 31:07
  Because you're reviewing some stuff, you're going back, you're hitting these things again when you could be looking at new material. Yeah, but you're retaining it all, right? And that makes a big difference in terms of what you're able to take with you when you're done.
• 31:20
  Christy-Faith: A thousand percent. Yeah. And I think that in this sense, homeschoolers really have an edge because we can stay in a concept or a topic or a chapter as long as our child needs. And I think that's really important, especially with mathematics instruction. You know, there's always this conversation in education about gaps.
• 31:39
  I have gaps. My kid will have gaps, gaps, gaps. And, right, our kids are gonna have gaps in everything, but I often tell moms, just try not to have gaps. You will, but try not to at least in math and literacy because those are
• 31:52
  Nathan King: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Christy-Faith: So foundational and they build on each other. Now, I'm gonna throw you a curveball right now, but I'm really excited about your opinion, your thoughts on this. So, you know, what's interesting is what I've noticed at least with a lot of the moms coming up right now, the newer homeschool moms where they're kind of leaning towards, I don't wanna use the word edu tainment, but I kinda need to, where they're really concerned if a math program is not compelling and exciting and fun for their kids. And where where do we where's that line? Like, to what point you know, that's always a tension we hold because we want kids engaged in learning, you know, when we're coaching moms.
• 32:36
  We're gonna have a little coaching sesh for the moms listening right now. We want our we want the kids to love learning and to be engaged. And, of course, CDC math, there's a lot of reasons why they do a good job at that. But there also still is at the end of the day that we have a responsibility, don't we, to to give our kids a a good solid education so that no doors are closed for them in the future. You are a homeschooling dad.
• 32:58
  I'm sure you had kids with all sorts of math abilities in your home. What's some words of wisdom that you can share to a mom right now listening where her kid is just like, she can't get her kid to do math. And it's just a nightmare and she's panicking. And so she keeps wanting to look at what's fun. What would you advise?
• 33:15
  Nathan King: So there I think there are times when fun is okay. I mean, like like that fun works, you know, in terms of if you can build a a review, right, that is fun and it's quote unquote gamified, to use that term, And CTC Math does this, right? We have some things, we have some kind of games that people can play and you can actually do those without even having a membership. You can go to ctcmath.com and there's something called speed skills and then there's also the multiplication review that we have. And those be kind of fun.
• 33:42
  And there are some types of learning that lend themselves to that. It's primarily factual and recall kinds of things that can be gamified because you're getting the practice over and over again. And why not have some fun with it? And flashcards can actually be fun. I know that not everyone likes that, but I mean, you can do games with things like flashcards.
• 34:01
  Even in the eighties when I grew up, I mean, we did do some things that were more in the game zone, right? The problem becomes when the game is, I would say the underlying foundation for what's happening there. I mean, you're trying to say, look, I can learn and gaming is the foundational key or the structure of how I'm doing that at all times. I would say that that gets into cart and horse kinds of material again. I would position it in the learning cycle when it's about review, not when it's about getting the information for the first time.
• 34:38
  The first time I would do explicit instruction. And kind of to answer maybe the implied question there is, would we not want to gamify everything? And the reality is that we don't actually want to increase screen time. That's not actually the purpose and point of what we would want to do as educators. And home educators or classroom educators, the idea is not to increase screen time.
• 35:05
  The idea is to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of what we're doing. So if a game does that, great.
• 35:13
  Christy-Faith: Yes.
• 35:13
  Nathan King: But game is not the answer for everything, right? And so so to structure it all on that is to basically make another fad that education goes into again. Right? Maybe on the on the micro scale, but it's still it's still doing something where I said, hey, I had this idea. Couldn't education all be games?
• 35:30
  Well, no. It's not all games. Right? But you can use games in the right place.
• 35:35
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. And there's even research that concepts stick better when play is involved. There's a lot of research on, like, play with learning, but also there's a ton of research on soft skills like resiliency, concentration, attention span, things like that, that when can we attend to a task that isn't exciting us in that very moment. Right? And so it's always that tension and that balance.
• 36:00
  And I think what's beautiful about homeschooling and homeschool families is based on our kid and what he or she needs in that moment where they are with their learning profile, we can customize exactly what they need, push them a little bit where they need to be pushed, you know, and and and give them the education that they need and deserve, and that will give them a really bright future. And so I think that's that's really cool. Hey, shout out to Summit HealthShare for sponsoring this episode today. I love Summit HealthShare partially because it's my husband's company. What I think they're doing over there is absolutely incredible and life changing for many families.
• 36:37
  What is Summit HealthShare? Well, first, let me start with one of my rants about health insurance. Need I say anything? Probably not. But the co pays, the denials, the in network out of network nonsense, having to get permission to see your doctor, paying thousands a month, and then them still fighting with you every time you need just basic health care.
• 36:57
  I believe so much in the freedom that comes with leaving health insurance and moving to health sharing. Now it's not health insurance, but it does replace it, and it's been around for over a hundred years. With Summit HealthShare, most families and companies save 40 to 60%, and they have a 98% customer satisfaction. You get to see any doctor that you want, even holistic ones. No networks, no permission slips.
• 37:24
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• 37:41
  Our family of six has saved a thousand dollars a month. And if it sounds too good to be true, it's not. It's actually how health care should work. We've just been accustomed to overpaying for our health care, and a lot of us don't need to do that. So if you are on traditional health insurance at all, here's what I want you to do.
• 37:57
  I want you to go to summithealthshare.com. When you get to the homepage, you'll see the savings calculator. Go ahead and click that. It takes only two minutes. And when you see those numbers, what you should be paying for the health care you need, you are going to be grabbing the phone so fast because health care is a serious thing, and you're gonna have really personalized questions, and they are used to answering all of them.
• 38:18
  Tell them all of your concerns, all of your questions, and they will tell you full stop if this is gonna be a fit for you or your family. And tell them that you listen to the show because I want you to have the VIP treatment. Go to summithealthshare.com today, and the link is in the show notes. This podcast is also brought to you by because I want you to know what this is. I'm really proud of what The Christy-Faith List has become.
• 38:41
  It started really scrappy just compiling recommendations because I was fed up with guessing which businesses and providers and doctors weren't gonna give me a hard time when I walked through those doors. And I had tons of friends and family members with nightmare situations where they felt like they were walking into an ambush situation just when they were trying to get help for their families. And I was sick and tired of the discrimination that homeschool families were getting. But since then, it has grown into a massive directory of colleges, businesses, doctor's offices, reading specialists, occupational therapists, homeschool graduates that are in business themselves now. You name it all in one place.
• 39:19
  Because why wouldn't we wanna do business with the people who share our values and actually want to work with homeschool families and not give us a hard time? It is completely free for homeschool families to search. And if you are a business owner or part of an organization that loves homeschool families and wants to reach more homeschool families and grow your business in that way, please sign yourself up. We wanna know who you are. It's the place where homeschool families support the people who support us.
• 39:45
  Go to the christyfaithlist.com today. Now, one thing also that I wanna make sure that moms here before the show ends is, can we have a conversation about automaticity and how important that is with math?
• 39:59
  Nathan King: Yes. So I think when you're talking about automaticity, you're talking about the ability to actually bring up multiplication tables at will, I mean, that's like the classic version, Yeah.
• 40:09
  Christy-Faith: Okay.
• 40:10
  Nathan King: Thing about automaticity is that if you have it, your capacity not to engage with easy math, right? Like the grocery list and all the things that happen. You don't have to pull a calculator. You don't even have to pull your phone out, okay? To be able to do some of this stuff, whether you're having to do the estimated stuff like my wife, if we're going shopping, I am the estimator, that is my job.
• 40:35
  And so she says, how big is my grocery bill so far? And I have a number, right? It's And not exact because I didn't bother to worry about all the sense, but I have a pretty good idea of where things are. But I couldn't do that if I didn't have this automaticity, right? Whether it's that kind of a thing, whether it's just the mundane everyday mathematics that go into our lives or whether it's just, if it's in my studies, the ability to actually do the multiplication at will and pull it from my brain is so much faster.
• 41:06
  A person who has that capacity is so much faster than the person who has to use a calculator. Right? The speed is really, I mean, it's night and day. And the reality is if you have all of that understanding at your ready to recall, your ability to actually build math comprehension, frankly, in my view, goes up. I do not have research backing that up, but I've seen it.
• 41:30
  Okay? As far as, you know, as far as what students do in my own life. Yeah. If you have an obesity, go ahead.
• 41:35
  Christy-Faith: And when we coach moms, we coach them in our community that math should happen twice a day. Right? You have your math, lesson that you're doing, and then maybe and I I did it in the afternoon. It doesn't matter when you do it, but hit math facts. Hit math facts.
• 41:50
  Do make it fun. Do all sorts of things. You know, through the years, I now have, like, high schooler on down. Through the years, we use different apps and programs and flashcards to, like, spice it up. But all of my children, even my children that have learning stuff going on, pretty serious stuff going on, have automaticity with their math facts, and it makes math so much easier.
• 42:10
  You know, in the early years, it was skip counting. It was the songs was skip counting. And so I think that's just so important. Nathan, before we go today, is there one thing that you would want every mom listening today to walk away with?
• 42:24
  Nathan King: I think it matters how we teach our kids. It does matter. Because we are when our minds are trained and we learn things that we did not come up with, right, we are actually equipped and we're actually given the capacity to then do the cool stuff, to do the creativity, to think beyond the box, right? But we have to have the tools to do that. And so whether you're using a system like CTC Math, that hopefully makes that a lot easier, or whether you have some other curriculum, teach those tools.
• 42:59
  Don't try to give to your student something that they cannot approach until they have that tool set that they absolutely need to get it done.
• 43:07
  Christy-Faith: Yes. Hear, hear. And for the mom who maybe has never heard of CTC Math, which would be crazy if she listens to my show, Where can she find CTC Math and what is it all about?
• 43:17
  Nathan King: Absolutely. So you can find us at ctcmath.com. Easy enough. The CTC Math begins we we we are all about explicit instruction, and we do that, through short videos. Okay?
• 43:28
  It is an online program. So we have short engineered videos and that makes it easy for kids to access it, right? They're gonna be able to understand what the lesson means. And if they need to watch it again, they can, right? But as soon as they're ready, we want to get them straight into practice and our practice is adaptive.
• 43:44
  Whatever level the student is at, the questions will actually alter on the platform. They'll actually change depending on the student's ability level. And so a very, very advanced student will be challenged, right? The questions will get harder and harder and they will absolutely be challenged in the same topic, right? But we can give them harder and harder questions.
• 44:02
  In the same way, a student who's struggling in that particular area, the questions will actually get simpler and simpler, a little bit easier in the same topic, but we'll actually meet that student where they're at and we'll actually help to bring them up. And if you have like a printed workbook or something, I mean, you know, if the workbook's going along here, it's just going on merrily on its way and a student is struggling, they're coming down here, the workbook can't do anything about that, right? We have technology now, which is so cool. We can actually adapt to where that student is and bring them back up so that they can experience success. And we're all about success.
• 44:34
  Those small successes that a student has when they get the question right, when they get the lesson right, when they, bit by bit, they have those small successes, that's what's gonna build math confidence, which is going to be the bane of math anxiety, which we talked about earlier. And that's what we want is we wanna give them the wins because they can learn math. And of course, like we already mentioned, we are mastery based. And so a student will know that they know that they know the content. We do have a spiral review that comes back so that we keep it fresh.
• 45:04
  The students about once a week we do that and they can revisit the concepts that they've been learning. And then of course we also have automatic grading and great analytics for the parents so they can see exactly where their student is. Again, because we have technology, we can do these cool things. And so we have those things. When you bring that all together, it gives you kind of one comprehensive solution for your maths education for your student.
• 45:25
  I said maths. I did that experiment then. I did it. I did it.
• 45:29
  Christy-Faith: Remember my my European clients would always say maths when I when I talked Yeah. To And then also one thing that is really different that CDC does that other people don't do or can't do and we've utilized ourself is one student's account has access to all the grade levels. So for example, I have a fifth grader who is halfway through sixth grade math. She just breezed right through it. I have a struggling learner in my home.
• 45:54
  And regarding that regarding the lessons, when that particular student in my home, struggled, sometimes we jump to that lesson in the previous grade level, redo that, get mastery in that, then jump. And so it's just really cool how it can almost be a math well, almost, it is a math tutor as well as a math curriculum, and it's
• 46:14
  Nathan King: 100%.
• 46:15
  Christy-Faith: Teaching and grading for mom, which is amazing. So I am so glad that you came on the show today, ladies. I'll put a link in the show notes if you wanna do a free trial of CTC math. There's no risk. I personally publicly say that I think CTC math is the one curriculum you should be putting against everything else to really see because it really truly is an answer for so many families.
• 46:41
  It's always getting better. It is a solution for all different types of learners. And so for that, I'm really thankful. I don't enjoy teaching math, and I often tell people by third grade, I'm out. I'm out.
• 46:53
  I'm a full time working homeschool mom. No. But I'm really thankful, and I love getting those reports. And, and the other thing cool too is that because it's taking that mental load off of me, I can sit there next to one of my kids doing a CTC math lesson. I can be emotional support.
• 47:10
  I can kind of tune in a little bit if there's a question, I'm there, but the entire mental load of the instruction for that subject isn't on me. And I am one of those no. I got straight a's in math, but, you know, I'm a humanities girly. And so I definitely am math insecure where, I'm thankful for CTC Math. So I appreciate you coming on the show today, Nathan.
• 47:29
  Thank you so much.
• 47:30
  Nathan King: Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's been it's been a pleasure.