Pursuit 365 Day 322: Adrienne Gear

Adrienne Gear is an elementary teacher from Vancouver with over 25 years teaching experience. She is the author of seven professional books for teachers, a literacy consultant, and a well-known BC educator.

Passionate about reading from an early age, Adrienne has always strived to bring the joy of reading to her students. Early in her career, she observed many students reading words but not comprehending the text. In other words, they were “book reading” but not “brain reading”. She developed Reading Power as a way of helping readers engage in a more meaningful reading experience by focusing on their thinking while they read. She wrote her first book, Reading Power: Teaching students how to think while they read (Pembroke, 2006) to help teachers move away from assigning and assessing literal comprehension questions and help their students interact with text using comprehension strategies, or “Reading Powers”. Her popular Reading Power and Writing Power strategies and lessons are now being used in hundreds of classrooms across the country and around the world.

Adrienne has since written six other professional books for elementary teachers in the area of reading and writing instruction. She runs her own educational consulting company, Reading Power Gear, ltd. (proudly holding the title “CEO” – Chief Everything Officer!) She is a well-sought after educational workshop presenter and keynote speaker who uses practical, engaging strategies to teach young students big concepts. Her lessons are always grounded in authentic children’s literature, and she is known in the teaching world as “the book queen”. She presents workshops and webinars across the province, nationally and internationally and stays grounded in classroom practice. Since Covid, most of her presentations are done virtually. Her books have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish, and Chinese.

Adrienne’s popular “Power” series: https://www.readingpowergear.com/store

Adrienne knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was five years old. She used to set up her stuffies in a circle on her bedroom floor and “read” to them. When she was eight years old, her father, an English teacher himself, bought her her very first book – “Little House on the Prairie” by Laura Ingles Wilder. Opening that book opened her world. She kept the book under her pillow and read it more times than she could count. Years later, her love of books and her love for teaching would play an integral role in her career.

Adrienne graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Education degree. Since there were no teaching jobs to be found, she packed her bags and moved to Tokyo where she taught at a prestigious Japanese girl’s school for three years. She returned to Vancouver, began her teaching career with the Vancouver School Board, and returned to UBC to earn her master’s degree. Slowly, Adrienne began presenting her ideas to educators at conferences. As her company and workshop requests grew, she balanced her time between teaching students and teaching teachers.

Adrienne is passionate about children’s books and is at her best when she is in a classroom reading a picture book to a group of students. She collaborates with many children’s publishing companies and distributors, reviewing and sharing new releases and book lists with teachers on social media. She is active on social media and often shares the latest and greatest children’s books in her posts. Last year, she began a collaboration with United Library Services to offer “GearPick Packs” – a yearly Reading Power book subscription service, to schools and school libraries. She also is working with the team of a new online reading platform called Simbi: Read for Good, selecting and writing original books for their Global online library, as well as helping to develop their reading curriculum.

She and her husband raised two boys and spent many hours in hockey rinks and on baseball fields. In fact, most of her books were written in hockey rinks! When Adrienne is not reading, writing, or working with teachers, you will find her spending time with her family or hiking in the trails with her dog, Maggie.