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AZ Berman High School learners who were part of the tutoring programme offered by GrandWest and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Schools Enrichment Centre (AIMSSEC) sat with People’s Post to reflect on their experience.
Michaela Locke (13), Keisha Hayley Greenfield (14) and Eythan Arendse (14), all Grade 8 learners at the school in Tafelsig, attended the programme from February to June.
AIMSSEC is a non-profit organisation that provides professional development courses for math teachers, particularly to improve subject knowledge and empower teachers from disadvantaged, rural and township communities
All the trio wants is to finish school and make names for themselves in the respective industries they have dreams of penetrating one day. They are confident and express themselves freely. One of the subjects they enjoy is mathematics. They say it is not easy and their teachers are doing their utmost best to teach them. The programme brought so much relief as it has extra classes and it improved their confidence.
They shared some of the things they learned which they vowed to keep as treasures in their schooling careers.
According to the teenagers, even though they could not reveal numbers, their performance has improved due to the programme. They refer to tutors as mentors and said the programme, even though it was about mathematics, helped them to also grow emotionally. The teenagers said creative methods were used to make learning easier for them.
“Our mentors told us that whenever we come across challenges, we must face them head-on,” shared Locke.
One of the things she liked about the mentors was that they could easily approach them. “I felt I could speak to them about anything and not just what they were teaching us,” she said.
When she finishes school, she wishes to become an international chef. “I love food, creating recipes and ideas on how food can improve one’s life,” she explained.
For Arendse, the programme was enjoyable especially because of the games that they would play in between lessons. He said the games had a way of teaching them how to solve math problems and they were fun. He said he found the methods used by the mentors quite easy to understand.
When he finishes school, he wishes to be a community development worker. “I would like to help the community to become better,” he said.
All Greenfield wants to say is thank you to her teachers and the mentors. She was part of a group that was taught in Afrikaans by the same mentors. She said she wants to be a doctor when she finishes school because she feels like there are a lot of sick people who need to be healed.
