top of page

Ann​a Gebauer

Founder and Instructor

About My Niche Sensory Learning

Welcome to My Niche Sensory Learning!

Located in the Dunbar neighbourhood of Vancouver's West Side, My Niche Sensory Learning is a unique literacy enhancement and tutoring offering  for elementary, middle, and senior school students.  My Niche supports students who find reading, written composition, and oral expression stressful or challenging.  And, we work with students looking for further challenges and enrichment opportunities, including professional oral presentation coaching.


The My Niche Sensory Learning Studio provides a warm, welcoming, and quiet environment for calm, focused learning. It's also a place where students are supported, encouraged, and inspired to learn and meet new challenges.  My Niche has a broad range of offerings, all of which are flexible and personalized to meet the individual needs of each student.


My name is Anna Gebauer. As the Founder of My Niche Sensory Learning, I bring a wealth of academic and unique professional experience to my students.  I am an experienced academic, communications, and literacy tutor. I hold degrees in both English Literature and History. I'm a professional writer and, for over a decade, worked as an award-winning broadcast journalist here in Vancouver. I have also completed the Orton Gillingham Teacher Training Course. 


True literacy is three-fold -- encompassing reading, writing, and oral expression. The My Niche approach supports and enhances all three forms of literacy expression and communication during each and every lesson.


As a mum of three children, I've seen first hand how challenging learning can be, and the incredible difference the phonetic and multi-sensory approach makes for young students learning to read, write, and decode language.  Expanding instruction to include the spoken word builds profound confidence in students and it is the incorporation of this offering that is part of what makes the My Niche approach truly unique.

Please be in touch to learn more.

What is the Orton Gillingham approach?

Named for the contributions of neuropsychologist, Samuel Orton, and Anna Gillingham, a prominent educator and psychologist in the early 20th century, the Orton Gillingham approach was developed to meet the needs of students struggling to achieve basic and more advanced literacy.


Robust research has since shown the OG approach to greatly enhance literacy outcomes for a broad range of students. By building strong phonemic awareness, the foundation is set for decoding language, expanding vocabulary, improving comprehension, and enhancing overall language fluency.


Employing direct and explicit instruction that is multisensory (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic), the sequential and flexible OG approach not only supports students with language-based learning differences in reading, writing, and spelling, but has been shown to give young emerging readers a jump start in early literacy, benefit delayed readers, and also provide young English language learners with a solid foundation for communicating in written and spoken English.


The personalized, building block approach ensures success with each lesson leading to improved self confidence, reduced academic anxiety, and eventually, an appreciation of the language which had once been a struggle.

It takes time. With the right tools, the pieces fall into place.


bottom of page