Emily Llewellyn

Who Am I?

Hello! My name is Emily and I'm an Elementary Education major.

I was born in Tennessee, but have lived in several states since then. I will always love Tennessee, but I've enjoyed everywhere I have lived. One of my favorite places I've lived was Chicago, simply because of the amount of things to do in the area. Also, I would rather be cold than hot!

My family and I have a couple pets. We have a cat named Mirasol, 3 rats (named Nibbles, Tibbles and Goose), and, sadly, had to recently make the decision to put our dog Ava to sleep due to severe health issues.

I'm 30 years old, married, and the mother of two.

I spent 11 years in the Navy before I began at ODU. While I never made it over seas, my time in the Navy was interesting, challenging, and rewarding in different ways. I look forward to continuing my life in teaching - a job I've always thought about when I asked myself "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

I'll take the lessons I learned in the Navy with me for the rest of my life, but I'm looking forward to a different sort of adventure and having more time at home with my family.

My hobbies include: reading, video games, escape rooms, and just getting out and doing things.

One of my favorite things to do is just look for different events in the area and pick one and go. I enjoy finding new places to explore, especially with kids. In my down time, I do enjoy playing video games (my favorite over the last year has been Baldur's Gate 3) and I enjoy reading a variety of fiction.

My husband and I have also recently became avid fans of escape rooms - of which there is a lot of options for in Virginia Beach!

What I Know

Every person, big or small, has a life outside work or the classroom.

In a textbook for a different class, they referred to this as "the invisible backpack". In my time in the Navy, I have seen how heavy some of these backpacks can be and it has taught me to reserve judgement until you know what's happening outside your room.

Every child has the ability to succeed, if given the right tools.

Between my children and my children's friends, I know everyone learns differently and at their own pace. I also know some children need help outside what I alone can give them and will do my best to make sure they receive the resources they need.

Yelling doesn't create a controlled classroom.

I primarily learned this from my daughter. My daughter will go from a happy to learn student to stressed and unable to focus on the content if the teacher yells more than on a rare occasion. I will spend time to find classroom management tools that work that do not involve screaming.

Every child deserves their moment to shine.

I will strive to ensure there is no favoritism shown in my classroom. From my own time in school to my daughter's, I know how easy it is for students to slip into the background behind the louder students. I will try to make sure every child in my class feels as though their voice is heard.

What I Have To Learn

Parental Concerns and Adminstrative Concerns

I feel much more confident about actually teaching my students than I do about handling parents and administrators that have problems with my classroom. Perhaps I have read too many stories from prior and current teachers, but the students seem much less intimidating than the parents.

Classroom Management Skills

One of my biggest worries about my future classroom is handling behavioral problems and what implementations I can put in place to prevent as many behavioral problems ahead of time. I know all students are different and all will respond differently, so how do I find a classroom management technique that works for all of them?

Lesson Planning

A more concrete concern is how to write a lesson plan. I imagine by the end of my college career I will have learned how to write one, but currently I do worry about how to create lesson plans for every standard we are expected to teach our students.

The Type of Teacher I Will Become

When you walk into my classroom, you will see groups of students working together on projects related to the standards we must follow. I will endeavor to make the projects as real-life related and applicable as I can, so students feel like they are learning something purposeful, instead of rote memorizing material with no idea why they are learning it. I will encourage my students to be confident in themselves and their abilities and allow their personalities to show in different ways throughout the year. My teaching philosophies include progressivism, to allow my students to learn through hands-on and real life projects as much as possible; essentialism, to ensure my students have the tools they need to succeed in future classrooms; and existentialism, to allow my students to become self confident in their abilities by making choices and exploring their own interests. My role will be to guide my students in a direction, but their role will to be deciding what stops to make along the way.

Comments

I love the way you did your section! I am a bit behind on the end of creating things on google docs and others. I agree with your stance on yelling doesn't create a controlled classroom. Growing up, many of my teachers yelled, as well as my parents, so it was triggering and caused issues when trying to retain information or just being comfortable in school. I feel as if more educators need to have patience for their students. -Kelsey L.

Hi Emily! First things first, thank you for your service and your two babies are adorable. I really enjoyed your page. I completely sympathize with the worry of admin and parents. I am also a big worrier of classroom management. Your educational philosophies are what we need in classrooms. -Kianna Meadows

AI Policy: In this assignment I used AI technology for both my "What Type of Teacher I will become" image and the background image used throughout. For my teacher image, I used the following prompt on Canva image creator: “ A cartoon style image of a teacher guiding students working together in a group. The students should all be working together and the classroom should feel welcoming”. For my background image, I used the following prompt: "A Retro Flowers Background for PowerPoint."

In general, I prefer to use artificial intelligence sparingly, primarily due to two concerns: the environmental impact AI may cause and the issue of the lack of oversight on the large data packs purchased by Large Language Models (LLMs), notably the use of artwork and other works without permission of the original author. While I did use AI for this project, in the future I will avoid usage when possible. While I believe artificial intelligence can be a useful tool, I believe the concept has a ways to go before it should become a larger factor in my life.

Hi Emily! I love how your page also includes your kids and your dog! I love how bright and it feels so open and loving. I too can relate because I am prior navy so its cool to be in class with you! I can't believe your love for Chicago because I think I would die in the winter time there. I think you are going to do so well with teaching! -Karis Herrmann

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