Founder, Eleanor Nicholson, on the Hope that Launched High Jump

At High Jump’s 2024 annual benefit, founder Eleanor Nicholson shared the vision that launched the program and the hope and gratitude that propels it. Read on for Eleanor’s full speech.

I’m grateful to the fabulous High Jump team for giving me the opportunity to speak briefly with you tonight as I look back 35 years.

In 1988, my second year as Head of the Senior School at Latin, I noted a little group of new ninth graders—mostly girls.  Some were African-American, some were Hmong. Successful in their public middle schools, they had been seen as children of promise and been given scholarships by generous patrons.  By and large, they were shy, quiet, lovely, and lost.  They were overwhelmed by the rigor of Latin classes. Nor were they in any way prepared for the social environment where most of the ninth-graders they were joining had been together at Latin since Kindergarten and had formed their social groups long before. The will was there, the intelligence and curiosity were there, the parental support was there, the scholarship was provided, but they didn’t flourish in a foreign world.  Yet they needed the demanding education of Latin and Latin needed them.

Was entry in ninth grade too late? Could they have been successful had they come to Latin earlier, more confident and more prepared?  John Cotton, Principal at Francis Parker, had some of the same questions.  We dreamed up a comprehensive summer program with academic subjects, the arts and physical activities including use of Latin’s pool.  The program was designed to support a love of learning, stimulate curiosity, and foster a strong sense of community.  We sent our proposal off to the Fry Foundation with a request for $40,000 and met with the open-minded and open-hearted Fry Committee. 

We got it!  We planned over the next year, found a Chicago public school teacher to start in the summer, enrolled 16 rising seventh graders to inaugurate the program and off it went. Hopeful as we were when we launched the program, what we are celebrating here exceeds even the wildest dreams of those of us who were in at the beginning.

Nearly 3,000 kids have attended or are attending great high schools that challenged them and prepared them for a range of fine colleges across the nation, from which an extraordinary 87% of them graduate. 

High Jump has not been an ordinary program and these have not been ordinary kids.  They are curious, eager to learn, and brave; in order to reach their goals, they are willing to inhabit the unknown outside their comfort zone where they might not “fit.”

For thirty-five years, people like those of you here tonight—parents, community well-wishers, educators, alumni, representatives of the three great schools—have supported the vision with your time and treasure.  You have made the dream a reality and 3,000 young people have experienced educational excellence designed to change their lives.  Thanks to you the paths they have pursued have brought to the wider professional community open, confident, generous, effective models of the possible.

I am grateful for your affirmation of the vision that launched a tiny experiment 35 years ago.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.