A B O U T   U S

The REACH Education team

Rosemary Cathcart  |  Louise Tapper  |  Sue Barriball

Rosemary Cathcart

Rosemary has been involved in gifted education since 1981 in a wide variety of roles as both parent and teacher. In the mid 1980's she developed the REACH model for teaching gifted children, then became involved in taking workshops for teachers, and from 1990 to 1994 was tutor for the Auckland College of Education's post-grad papers in this field. From 1992 to 1995 she served as sole advisor on gifted children for the Special Education Service (now GSE). In 1995, she established New Zealand's only education centre specialising in gifted education, the George Parkyn Centre, led it through its first decade to its present nationally recognised status, and developed its innovative One Day School programme. She lobbied intensively for many years for change in official attitudes toward gifted education, leading to the Minister's Working Party on which she served. She has also worked extensively with parents and with parent groups and has served as national president of the NZ Assn for Gifted Children and for many years as advisor to that body's National Council. Her published work in this field includes a teachers' manual now in its third edition, editing the papers of Professor George Parkyn, writing a management guide to implementing the Ministry's policy following the NAG change in 2005, and various articles. She was awarded the QSM in 2004 for her work in gifted education.

She has a particular interest in professional development in this field. She has travelled regularly throughout New Zealand delivering many hundreds of workshops and seminars for teachers at every level, in schools, universities, colleges of education and to various professional groups ranging from trainee psychologists to ERO, and has worked on various Ministry contracts. In 2006 she established REACH Education Consultancy to allow her to focus on this aspect of gifted education. She is also currently involved in a research project in cooperation with the US National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented.

Her "other" life has included activities such as working as a postie while studying, editing an arts programme for Concert FM, writing feature material on house design, being a play centre Mum, setting up an annual community fair and being an active political party member. She lives in Rotorua with her husband and a mischievous cat.

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Louise Tapper

Louise has been an educator in the field of gifted education since the mid 1990s. She is a parent of gifted children, from whom she has gained much of her knowledge and she is a life-long learner in this area! She is a trained primary school teacher with a Masters degree in Education (Dist.), and originally taught extension studies at Southbrook School in Rangiora for five years. In 1996 she set up the Sirius programme, a cluster group involving 16 North Canterbury schools which runs district wide focus days for gifted students, and acted as its Programme Director until 2005, managing a website for these students and organising professional development programmes for teachers. She also co-wrote a non-credit optional course for third year teacher trainees, which she taught from 2001 until 2005 at the Christchurch College of Education. She currently teaches in the Graduate Certificate in Gifted Education programme at the Christchurch College of Education and also writes and teaches courses based at the University of Canterbury to parents of gifted and talented children, and is the co-founder and a life member of the North Canterbury Support Group for Gifted and Talented Children.

Louise will begin studying for her Ph.D. in gifted education in 2007, and is currently involved in a research project on "Gifted boys' experiences of school" which will also be published in 2007. Material from this project was presented at the World Conference on Gifted and Talented Children in New Orleans in 2005. She is a member of the Advisory Group to the Ministry on Gifted and Talented Education and was Chair of the organising committee for the highly successful National Gifted and Talented Conference, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, held in Wellington in August 2006.

Her spare time is involved in transporting children to various activities, managing a five acre farmlet, and theatregoing and tramping whenever possible.

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Sue Barriball

Sue has had a lifelong interest in gifted children. A teacher at primary school once accused her of ‘swallowing an encyclopaedia’ when she gave an 8-minute speech on Brazil at the age of 9 without cue cards! During her degree studies, Sue completed the only two papers which were available in gifted education at the time. As a young teacher in the early 1980s, she made waves at the secondary school she taught at when she advocated for retention of a disaffected gifted student and the need for the student to be allowed to study at a higher level.

Since then, Sue has taught at Waiuku College and St Mary’s College, Auckland, followed by 8 years as Professional Studies tutor at Manukau Institute of Technology in their Graduate Diploma in Secondary Teaching programme, where her students received a good grounding in gifted education. In 2002, Sue joined the George Parkyn Centre for Gifted Education as a One Day School teacher and was quickly promoted to the role of Deputy-Director for One Day School, mentoring new ODS teachers, and helped to train the Centre’s professional development staff. When Rosemary Cathcart retired from the Director’s role, Sue was her successor.
However, the call of the classroom was too strong and Sue chose to return to her first love, teaching gifted kids, in 2006 and now teaches for the Gifted Kids Programme, where she is the Lead Teacher at the Tamaki GKP Unit.

In addition to the insights gained from years of experience working with gifted children, Sue is blessed with three gifted children of her own, one highly gifted and the others moderately gifted. Negotiating their way through the education system has been a challenge and only now is she beginning to see her own children’s needs being met on a regular basis. Hence her interest in helping educate teachers about gifted children. She is a regular contributor to the Forum pages on the NZAGC site. Sue’s special interests in this field are gifted girls, visual-spatial learners, creativity, and social-emotional needs of gifted adolescents.

When she is not planning and delivering lessons, Sue is an avid reader of history books and thrillers, member of a book group, taxi-driver extraordinaire for her children (not to mention chief cook and bottle-washer, and sounding board), movie-goer, and mosaicist.

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