Katherine Bates completed a Masters of Education (Distinction) at the University of Wollongong, NSW in 2007. She has been teaching since 1984 in preschools, primary and secondary schools as a classroom and literacy support teacher. In 2008, as a Senior Education Officer with the NSW Department of Education, she managed the project of designing the National Teacher Support Materials in an online HTML format to support student followup of the National Assessment for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Currently she teaches Community Welfare and Literacy in TAFE, presents at conferences, workshops and professional learning seminars on Literacy while completing her Doctorate of Education in Visual Literacy at the University of Wollongong.
Personal
Katherine spent most of her childhood in the Southern Suburbs of Sydney, apart from a brief time in Townsville, Queensland as a toddler. As an adult, the majority of her teaching in Private, Catholic and State Schools has been in Sydney, apart from a brief time at Coorabell, Byron Bay when she lived in Bangalow on the Far North Coast. It was in Bangalow that she began her writing and on return to Sydney began publishing her work.
Katherine's partner has also moved into the Education field taking his career experience in Building and Project Management to TAFE. He sees the key issues that literacy gaps can cause for adult learners and the limitations literacy difficulties can create as students communicate meaning in the written form and access information that they require for their area of study.
Katherine is passionate about teaching and developing all aspects of children as they learn – the emotional, social and educational. She strongly believes that children's resilience and ability to cope with situations affects their to their ability to face, deal with and conquer learning to read. Her commitment to developing best practice so that children can access literacy has led to her specialization in the field.