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At BTI, you will learn from staff who are experienced teachers and educators, researchers, practitioners, health workers and graduates themselves. Many have worked in private practice, for public institutions and for universities in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas.
Biography
Rebekah Thomas was born, raised and has a deep connection to Tauranga Moana. She is committed to honouring and upholding Te Tiriti and continuing to learn and understand partnership within Education, Counselling and Faith Communities. She originally trained as a secondary school Art teacher and taught in Matamata, South Korea and London where she enjoyed travelling and learning about new cultures, ideas and ways of being.
She has been married for 26 years and has four children. She completed a Master of Education in 2006 after moving home to New Zealand to have children where she was a stay-at-home mother for a number of years and volunteered in the community. She was actively involved in her local church, creating faith-based curriculum for pre-schoolers through to intermediate age children. She has also written guidelines for working with rangatahi and teaching faith ideas in safe and ethical ways. She has been a children’s and family pastor for 7 years and has worked in pastoral care of children, couples and families.
She completed her Master of Counselling at the University of Waikato with first class honours in 2020 and has been employed as a guidance counsellor at Pāpāmoa College, in private practice, and as a teaching fellow at Waikato University in counselling and human development. In 2022 she joined the BTI whānau whilst continuing guidance counselling and private practice.
Her Master of Counselling at Waikato interwove Mātauranga Māori and culturally responsive practice. She engaged in Noho Marae in Waikato, Maniaroa and Parihaka and has continued to explore and learn through connection with clients, peer supervision, further study and cultural supervision. Her directed study was an auto-ethnographical work entitled “Becoming, with Art Matters; about the relationship with Art, Matter and the therapeutic space”. She is currently enrolled at The University of Canterbury as a PhD candidate where she continues to explore art, matter, wairua and interconnectedness within the therapeutic space. Her working title for her PhD is; Becoming with Art-matters: Storying identity through becoming. What comes to matter in the hyphen space of potentiality.
In 2023 she accepted the Programme Lead Academic: Counselling at BTI and continues to pursue PhD study alongside private practice and teaching. Particular areas of interest for her are inviting art and creative practices into the therapeutic space, developing bi-cultural practice in partnership with Te Tiriti, and supporting individuals and couples to discover the threads of their own story within the greater narrative of the Jesus story.
Research
Rebekah is currently exploring these Research areas:
Areas of Expertise
Rebekah’s area of specialty is working from a narrative stance with children, adolescents, couples and families and drawing on creative practices in counselling. She also combines the narrative approaches of therapeutic documentation in her work
At BTI, you will learn from staff who are experienced teachers and educators, researchers, practitioners, health workers and graduates themselves. Many have worked in private practice, for public institutions and for universities in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas.
Biography
Rebekah Thomas was born, raised and has a deep connection to Tauranga Moana. She is committed to honouring and upholding Te Tiriti and continuing to learn and understand partnership within Education, Counselling and Faith Communities. She originally trained as a secondary school Art teacher and taught in Matamata, South Korea and London where she enjoyed travelling and learning about new cultures, ideas and ways of being.
She has been married for 26 years and has four children. She completed a Master of Education in 2006 after moving home to New Zealand to have children where she was a stay-at-home mother for a number of years and volunteered in the community. She was actively involved in her local church, creating faith-based curriculum for pre-schoolers through to intermediate age children. She has also written guidelines for working with rangatahi and teaching faith ideas in safe and ethical ways. She has been a children’s and family pastor for 7 years and has worked in pastoral care of children, couples and families.
She completed her Master of Counselling at the University of Waikato with first class honours in 2020 and has been employed as a guidance counsellor at Pāpāmoa College, in private practice, and as a teaching fellow at Waikato University in counselling and human development. In 2022 she joined the BTI whānau whilst continuing guidance counselling and private practice.
Her Master of Counselling at Waikato interwove Mātauranga Māori and culturally responsive practice. She engaged in Noho Marae in Waikato, Maniaroa and Parihaka and has continued to explore and learn through connection with clients, peer supervision, further study and cultural supervision. Her directed study was an auto-ethnographical work entitled “Becoming, with Art Matters; about the relationship with Art, Matter and the therapeutic space”. She is currently enrolled at The University of Canterbury as a PhD candidate where she continues to explore art, matter, wairua and interconnectedness within the therapeutic space. Her working title for her PhD is; Becoming with Art-matters: Storying identity through becoming. What comes to matter in the hyphen space of potentiality.
In 2023 she accepted the Programme Lead Academic: Counselling at BTI and continues to pursue PhD study alongside private practice and teaching. Particular areas of interest for her are inviting art and creative practices into the therapeutic space, developing bi-cultural practice in partnership with Te Tiriti, and supporting individuals and couples to discover the threads of their own story within the greater narrative of the Jesus story.
Research
Rebekah is currently exploring these Research areas:
Areas of Expertise
Rebekah’s area of specialty is working from a narrative stance with children, adolescents, couples and families and drawing on creative practices in counselling. She also combines the narrative approaches of therapeutic documentation in her work
Rebekah Thomas was born, raised and has a deep connection to Tauranga Moana. She is committed to honouring and upholding Te Tiriti and continuing to learn and understand partnership within Education, Counselling and Faith Communities. She originally trained as a secondary school Art teacher and taught in Matamata, South Korea and London where she enjoyed travelling and learning about new cultures, ideas and ways of being.
She has been married for 26 years and has four children. She completed a Master of Education in 2006 after moving home to New Zealand to have children where she was a stay-at-home mother for a number of years and volunteered in the community. She was actively involved in her local church, creating faith-based curriculum for pre-schoolers through to intermediate age children. She has also written guidelines for working with rangatahi and teaching faith ideas in safe and ethical ways. She has been a children’s and family pastor for 7 years and has worked in pastoral care of children, couples and families.
She completed her Master of Counselling at the University of Waikato with first class honours in 2020 and has been employed as a guidance counsellor at Pāpāmoa College, in private practice, and as a teaching fellow at Waikato University in counselling and human development. In 2022 she joined the BTI whānau whilst continuing guidance counselling and private practice.
Her Master of Counselling at Waikato interwove Mātauranga Māori and culturally responsive practice. She engaged in Noho Marae in Waikato, Maniaroa and Parihaka and has continued to explore and learn through connection with clients, peer supervision, further study and cultural supervision. Her directed study was an auto-ethnographical work entitled “Becoming, with Art Matters; about the relationship with Art, Matter and the therapeutic space”. She is currently enrolled at The University of Canterbury as a PhD candidate where she continues to explore art, matter, wairua and interconnectedness within the therapeutic space. Her working title for her PhD is; Becoming with Art-matters: Storying identity through becoming. What comes to matter in the hyphen space of potentiality.
In 2023 she accepted the Programme Lead Academic: Counselling at BTI and continues to pursue PhD study alongside private practice and teaching. Particular areas of interest for her are inviting art and creative practices into the therapeutic space, developing bi-cultural practice in partnership with Te Tiriti, and supporting individuals and couples to discover the threads of their own story within the greater narrative of the Jesus story.
Rebekah is currently exploring these Research areas:
Rebekah’s area of specialty is working from a narrative stance with children, adolescents, couples and families and drawing on creative practices in counselling. She also combines the narrative approaches of therapeutic documentation in her work