Adrienne Gear
Adrienne received her degrees from the University of British Columbia and spent three years teaching English in Japan. She was a classroom teacher for sixteen years and a teacher librarian for three years. She is currently a literacy mentor at Vancouver School Board and a workshop presenter.
"I think I have always wanted to be a teacher. When I was little, I would play teacher in my bedroom with my teddies and dolls. I would pretend to mark their notebooks and take attendance.
"I went straight to university after high school and got my B.Ed. I was thrilled when I finally had my very own classroom and my own real students to teach. When I first began to teach, I thought that I knew everything. Since I had spent the better part of my life going to school, I figured that it was my turn to do the teaching and my students' turn to do the learning. But close to twenty years have passed since I first began teaching and I realize now that although I am a teacher, I am first and foremost a learner.
"I consider myself to be on a learning journey—and when providing professional development workshops across the province, my hope for the participants is that not only will they come away with some practical ideas for their classroom, but more important, they will have traveled just a little farther along their own learning journey.
"Change in classrooms can only occur when there has been a change in thinking. My first book came out of five years of experiences in classrooms teaching reading comprehension and giving workshops to teachers. Basically, this book is a written version of my workshop. I tried to put my voice into the text and include many student samples, experiences, quotes, thoughts, lessons, blackline masters. I want anyone who reads it to come away from the book thinking about reading comprehension in a new way and to feel motivated to try some of the ideas in their own classrooms."
