In the late 19th and early 20th century, Baber formalized her progressive teaching methods and activist approach to geography that would set her apart from other contemporary geographers. In 1898, she founded the Chicago Geographic Society, which unlike other professional organizations prioritized women speakers at meeting and was open to the community. And in 1901, three years before she officially earned her bachelor’s degree, Baber was named an Associate Professor of the Teaching of Geography and Geology in the Department of Education—not geography.
Baber’s approach to education was holistic: for her, what seemed like disparate branches of knowledge were, in fact, interdependent and should be taught as such starting in elementary school. “The understanding of geographic facts necessitates a knowledge of science, mathematics, and history, and demands expression in reading, writing, modeling, drawing, painting, and making,” she wrote in the journal Elementary School Teacher. Baber believed that three main pedagogical elements could accomplish this interdisciplinary education, which she laid out in a 1904 article “The Scope of Geography.”
First, she argued that schools needed to get children out of the classroom and outside in their environments. Textbooks, while useful, could not teach geography students to see beyond their own immediate environment and experience; field trips, especially in economically-disadvantaged school districts, would facilitate a higher intellectual return. Baber argued that “[t]he measure of progress in teaching geography is nowhere more strongly marked than in the use of fieldwork.” When she would later argue in support of preserving the sand dunes, she built her case from the standpoint of children’s education in geography fieldwork.
When field trips were not possible, she maintained that students needed a hands-on, personal experience with the science to help them connect to the subject matter on a more personal level, which could be accomplished through lab work. Her ideas of how to achieve this were often creative: In 1896, Baber patented a desk specifically suited for geography and its “kindred sciences” that they may be taught “objectively by advanced methods.” The desk contained a receptacle for clay, a water well and a pan for sand, which were meant to give students the means to create their own miniature landscapes.
The third key element of geography education was map-making. This, to Baber, meant teaching students to understand that maps contain symbols that correspond to reality, to real places and real people. The teacher’s failure to give maps context was she wrote, “little short of a pedagogic crime.” Instead of copying maps, students should be required to create their own method for mapping while implementing accepted conventions of hatch lines, shading, and color schemes. This, she writes, would force students to “interpret the map into terms of reality.”