Redhill School teaches the numbers
A Redhill High School learner talks about the exercise of tutoring mathematics to hospitalised children in Johannesburg.
Redhill High School Grade 11 learner, Ronan Meltzer, has been volunteering his free time since last year towards tutoring school-going hospital patients in Johannesburg as an extra-curricular activity.
According to Ronan, the activity, known as the Redhill School Maths Tutoring Initiative, has managed to tutor about 1 500 patients and had about 60 tutors who have volunteered from Redhill, and various other schools and universities.
“This started last year. We began tutoring maths at the middle school of Redhill, helping with any questions that they may have, with their homework, even with Olympiad problems,” he said.
Ronan added he was driven by the will to make a lasting impact. Beyond Redhill middle school, the initiative assisted young patients admitted to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, as well as at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital.
“We expanded, and we went to Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital – the dialysis unit – and we tutored there, maths, every single day. Then, I wanted to have an even bigger impact, so we went to the Charlotte Maxeke hospital and we tutor at many wards there.”
He said the initiative to tutor maths had been a rewarding experience. “It’s genuinely insane-strange to see the effect that [maths] had on them.
“When we first started, all the kids did not want to do maths whatsoever. Then, slowly but surely, they started becoming more into it. It’s come to the point, literally, every single week it’s kind of the highlight of their week on a Saturday morning when we go.”
The Redhill School Maths Tutoring Initiative has grown from strength to strength, even gaining an endorsement, according to Meltzer.
“To keep up with it, we’ve had to expand and we’ve gotten endorsed and supported by Community Hours SA – the community initiative site.”
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