What is JUMP HI?
Herschel Girls’ Senior School, a top independent school in the Western Cape, has been running the SMILE literacy programme with a disadvantaged school as an extra-mural over the past couple of years. The programme has been very successful and it was decided that a numeracy component should be added.
Steve Sherman of Living Maths was called in to assist in this regard. He has great experience working with disadvantaged learners and he is enthusiastic about making a positive impact on maths education in South Africa.
Steve introduced the JUMP programme materials and suggested that a project could be structured to fit with Herschel's extra-mural mandate. After several strategic meetings, consultations with a teacher who was an experienced JUMP tutor (Liz Barrett - a past South African teacher and good friend of Steve), meetings with the Herschel Girls’ Preparatory Maths Department (Annette Champion and her team), the Herschel Senior School Maths Department , The Senior School Executive (Diana Van Zyl and her team), The Herschel outreach team headed by Gillian Van Blerk, email contact with the author of the materials (John Mighton), a plan was mapped out and dates were suggested to get the project moving.
The Project was named JUMP HI (Junior Undiscovered Maths Prodigies Herschel Initiative). In late June 2006, Steve Sherman presented the concept to all the girls in Herschel Senior School. An unprecedented 30 volunteers came forward with others being turned away as the numbers were limited. During July, a workshop was run for the 30 Herschel girls on how to conduct themselves during the one-on-one sessions with the learners, the power of praise and how to build the self esteem of young children. The hour and a half long workshop demonstrated the power of positivity and how young minds can be boosted with carefully chosen words and a positive attitude. The following week, a busload of 40 learners from the St Louis school arrived on the Herschel Campus. On Tuesday 1st of August 2006, the official launch took place and the first classes commenced. Each week, the project participants will grow and learn. We will journal our experiences ( the good and the bad), document our results and make recommendations on how to improve the project for future implementations .
The project is still very much alive and well at Herschel as well as other schools and centres around the country.
The goal of the project is to create a viable model that is well-run and sustainable and could be replicated by other schools around South Africa. This is a project that will make a meaningful contribution to maths education in South Africa. We will then embark on a programme of encouraging other top schools in the country to adopt this project as an opportunity to give back to the community. Planning is already underway to translate the materials into other African Languages so that more schools can benefit from the materials and learners will be able to work through the materials in their mother tongue.
