The iSipnayan pilot has just completed a full year (12 months) in pilot at Bagumbayan Elementary School, currently with a control group of 25 students from grades 3, 4 and 5. Since February 2008, Katherine “Ella” Cruz has been in charge of day-to-day operations of the iSipnayan room, which is open Tuesdays and Fridays from 1:00 to 4:30 pm. Teacher Ella is assisted every afternoon (to man the center and interact with the students on Tuesdays and Fridays and to assist with content development and improvement on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) by Ms. Ann Guarin. Also assisting with worksheet corrections on irregular basis is a Bagumbayan Elementary School teacher, Maam Eva.

Ella Cruz graduated from Ateneo with a Biology degree, and even taught Biology at the Ateneo high school for three years before joining Kumon, where she began by teaching Reading. Aside from her iSipnayan involvement, she is also part of the management team of the Loyola Learning Library.

When the pilot started in October 2007, the operations in-charge had been Ms. Michelle Salvador, with an initial intake of 30 Grade 4 students serving as control group. In the same way Ann Guarin assists Ella Cruz today, Margie Relato and later, Kath Malijan, assisted Teacher Michelle in the first five months of the pilot.

Much of the processes, procedures, documentation standards, and report formats have come from the experiences at the Kumon Math outreach center at Libis Elementary School.

As with any new program, the most critical component is content. Since June 2007, a dedicated team has been in charge of content development and content improvement, coming up with the draft worksheets per grade level and making improvements based on feedback from the center operators. From August 2007 to May 2008, the development team consisted of Cheryll Limos and Jelline Sanchez, both Philippine Science High School alumni and both taking up their masters degree in Applied Math major in Finance at ADMU.

Recently, the development team was reorganized, with Ella Cruz now sitting on top of both operations and development.
Currently supporting her on the development side are Michelle Salvador, Jaah Hermano, Kath Malijan and Ann Guarin.

The Grade 2 content is currently complete, fully debugged, and improved in two different stages during the 12 month pilot program. Grade 3 material is also complete, fully debugged and improvements are under implementation. Grade 4 worksheets are nearly complete but will still await feedback from the classroom before making first-wave changes. Most of the drafting of new questions are now focused on Grade 4 and 5 materials.

The student standouts in each grade level are: Geraldine Victorino of Grade 3 (doing G2-40), Jamille Reyes of Grade 4 (doing G2-60), and Aileen Reveche of Grade 5 (doing G3-55).