A CALLING TO CARE: SONIA KALLAI AND THE QUIET POWER OF EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHING
When Sonia Kallai’s name was announced as the overall national winner in the category Excellence in Grade R Teaching at the 2025 National Teaching Awards, her first response was not jubilation but disbelief. Then came gratitude. “My first thought was disbelief, followed quickly by gratitude,” she recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘Lord, you really saw me.’ I thought about my learners, my classroom, and the many quiet days when teaching felt unseen. It felt like a moment where every small effort mattered.” That moment, luminous and well deserved, has since settled into something deeper: a quiet affirmation of purpose. For Kallai, a UJ alumna whose work at Banana Primary School in Limpopo has transformed not only a classroom but a community, the award is less a personal triumph than a collective recognition. “As the excitement settled, the moment became deeply humbling,” she says. “I realised that the award is bigger than me; it represents the value of early childhood education and the dedication of so many teachers who work with young children every day without recognition.” A Calling Discovered Early For Kallai, teaching has never been simply a profession.
That calling found expression in Grade R classrooms, where the stakes are both foundational and profound. Teaching at this level, she notes, demands a kind of emotional presence that is often invisible to outsiders. “You are often the first safe space a child experiences outside the home,” she says. “You carry their fears, joys, insecurities and hopes. Teaching Grade R means giving reassurance, patience and love – every single day.”
It is a vocation shaped by instinct and sustained by purpose. Long before the accolades, she recognised in herself an unusual attentiveness to children – not only to their learning, but to their emotional worlds. “I realised it when I noticed how naturally I connected with children – how deeply I cared about their
emotions, their confidence and their growth,” she says. “Teaching never felt like a job; it felt like purpose. Over time, that sense of calling only became stronger.”
Ms Sonia Kallai at the 2025 National Teaching Awards
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ALUMNI IMPUMELELO
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