About Me

     My name is Emily Knight Thomas. I have 30 years of experience in education.  My teaching career began in 1986 in the Howard County School System in Maryland and ended eleven years later in the Gwinnett County School System in Georgia. During those eleven years, I taught kindergarten, second and third grades.  For two years following that, I was an elementary school counselor supporting students in areas of need both socially and academically. At that point I was appointed as an assistant principal and served in two different Title I elementary schools in Gwinnett.  In that capacity I served as an instructional leader, testing coordinator and special education coordinator for grades K-5. In November 2011, I began my career with the Georgia Department of Education first with the new teacher/leader state evaluation system and later as a School Improvement Specialist working with at risk high schools in the Atlanta Public School System. In this capacity I supported schools in data analysis, professional learning (based on needs identified through data) and increasing graduation rates through supporting graduation coaches in the schools.

     From 30 years of experience, I have come to believe that all students can learn. I believe that vocabulary development for young children is vital to their academic success in their early years in school. Parents frequently believe that only teachers can teach reading but nothing could be further from the truth. Parents are the first and most important teachers that their children encounter. Reading to children each day introduces the concepts about print including reading front to back, top to bottom and left to right. Talking with children greatly increases their vocabulary.  I want to ignite this understanding in parents. I am willing to do this one parent and one child at a time.