- Foreword
- Chapter 1 – Jill Sachs Smith
- Chapter 2 – Khwezi Mkhathini
- Chapter 3 – Kumarie Mohan
- Chapter 4 – Carry Paterson
- Chapter 5 – Jabu Mtheku
- Chapter 7 – Phindile Khumalo
- Chapter 8 – Grace Khanyile
Making a difference: Inspiration in the individual, and the individual as inspiration. Sue Bonney is a highly experienced and dedicated teacher who continues to devote her career to Early Childhood Development.
Sue was gifted this image of an edelweiss by German nuns when she was the 100th baby to be born at the Catholic Nursing Home in uMtata, and it has come to symbolize much of Sue’s life as a resilient outdoor person who thrives on simplicity, creation and challenges.
Having completed her teacher training in 1975 Sue was sent to KwamBonambi Pre-Primary School, KZN, where she continues to teach. Sue’s aim is to support the development of early learning in children so that they grow their potential and are ready to enter the formal school curriculum once they reach Grade R.
To achieve this with the children, Sue’s pedagogy relies on learning through play. For this to happen, she believes preschool teachers need specialized training, and this is where she aligns with Caversham Education Institute.
In 2003, Sue attended Jill’s Scope workshops when it was a part time, two-year foundation course where students earned a certificate in Early Childhood preschool teaching. At that time, four years before any accreditation of Scope, there was no National Framework of Qualifications, but Scope had been born out of a demand for more training by preschool teachers, and fortnightly workshops were held in an informal setting in Jill’s Westville home.
Back at KwamBonambi, Sue took the High Scope course and set out, with very little cash, to make something from nothing by building on her own courage, passion, vision and tenacity. She developed her class activities along the Scope lines, attracting more children in the process. Once she needed help, she brought in two long time colleagues, Pam and Debbie, and as of 2022, Sue has three Grade R classes.
Over the years, Sue has maintained her links with Jill and Caversham Education Institute, and Kwambonambi Preschool has become a model training school where students from CEI come for practical assessment and to better understand the concept of good active learning and inquiry-based teaching.
As a result, Sue has made Kwambonambi Pre-Primary school ‘home’ to many ECD teachers as she strives to make a difference through excellent, practical guidance for early years teachers, but without making them into mini-Grade R teachers. Early Childhood Development stands separate from the formal school curriculum, but it is an essential foundation on which children can build their own potential. In further testament to the success of Sue’s undertaking, all the 2022 Grade 7 prefects at the local Kwamonambi Primary School are ‘graduates’ of Kwambonambi Preschool.
Through Sue, and other teachers like her who have also experienced CEI training and carried it forward into their own schools, CEI and Jill’s influence has multiple reverberations throughout the Early Childhood development area. Two women whose lives have been changed as a result are Sibonsile and Nondomiso.
Sibonsile came across the CEI course quite by accident as she sold oranges at her small table on the side of the N2 North. She got chatting to a couple of her customers and asked where they were going. It so happened they were Bongi and Khanya on their way to a training workshop Kwambonambi Preschool. They talked with great enthusiasm about the course, and Sibonsile listened with interest, but without a plan to follow up on this news. She happily continued selling oranges to make a living until one day she thought about what had got the students so excited as a way of making a living as well as helping others.
Sibonsile now has a pre-school of her own, supported by the Department of Education, and she has an enrolment of 70 children. This success story was not an easy one, and she did a lot of back and forth, missing lectures to sell oranges to sustain herself and her family, but with much encouragement from the staff and other students, Sibonsile succeeded in changing her own life as well as those of the children who attend her school.
Nondumiso’s success story had entirely different roots to those of other students, as she arrived at the Kwambonambi preschool gates looking for a job. It happened to be during registration for a new intake of CEI students, and Nondumiso found herself presented with a set of registration forms by Sue, which she duly completed and handed in. During lockdown, there were not enough children to open Kwambonambi Preschool, but Nondumiso continued to come in, completing her studies.
Nondumiso is now working towards her degree through SANTS, a private higher education institute, by first taking their Diploma in Grade R teaching where she is achieving over 70% for all assignments and gaining 97% on her teaching practical.
Sue, her team, and Kwambonambi Pre-Primary school are just one of the ripples Caversham Education Institute continues spread into communities through its vision of inspiration in the individual and the individual as inspiration.