What it takes to teach through trauma

AT A KENSINGTON primary school, the arithmetic is the easy part.

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THE MathMoms programme trains and employs women to tutor foundation-phase learners in basic numeracy – with an emphasis on mentorship – helping to build safe sanctuaries for learning. I Supplied

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The harder work happens in the small human transactions around it: a child who keeps his eyes on the desk, finally looking up; an adult who has learned to be firm without becoming sharp; a classroom that feels, for 40 minutes, like a place where nothing bad is about to happen.MathMoms was founded in 2016 and operates in Elsies River, Kensington, and surrounding areas in Cape Town. It is led by parents who refuse to be defined by crime statistics such as gang-related violence, sexual violence, alcoholism and drug abuse, and the scourge of unemployment. Together with its inspirational founder, Sonja Cilliers, they have designed an entire model using mathematics as both school subject and social technology to bring together the values of hard work and human empathy to build safe sanctuaries for learning in some of Cape Town's most violent communities.

The programme trains and employs women - many of them mothers of the children at the schools they work with and from the communities it serves - to tutor foundation-phase learners in basic numeracy, often in tiny groups, so that teaching can be close enough to notice a flinch and slow enough to rebuild confidence. But if MathMoms is "maths support", it's also something more intimate: a network of adults practising steadiness and presence in neighbourhoods where such values are rarely visible or rewarded.