Ava Keamy ’27 has a stacked schedule, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
In addition to pursuing her undergraduate degree in human development and human services, with a concentration in early childhood education, and participating in a host of extracurriculars, she still finds time to care for her younger brother.
Keamy’s brother is a member of Waystone Health and Human Services, a Lawrence, Mass. nonprofit supporting people with disabilities and those with significant challenges. For the past year and a half, she served as her brother’s respite provider. This month, Waystone promoted Keamy to life skills teacher trainer.
“I’ve been helping him with making his bed and teaching him how to cook,” she explained. “We went to the movies and I taught him how to order popcorn himself. This promotion is an important step toward my future career in education, especially as I continue to build skills in teaching and supporting others. I’m most excited to take on a leadership role and help individuals develop the life skills they need to become more independent.”
Keamy said she knew she wanted to be an early child educator ever since she was young, particularly with preschoolers and first graders.
“I absolutely love being in school,” she explained. “My teachers were always so kind and passionate about what they do. I knew I wanted to do the same thing as well.”
Initially, Keamy planned on pursuing elementary education. That all changed during her first pre-practicum where she was placed at a preschool.
“I got to do lesson planning and interact with the kids,” she explained. “I ended up loving it so much that I changed my concentration to early childhood education. I really want to be a first grade teacher and sometime in the future I’d really like to work with preschoolers.”
One of Keamy’s favorite courses so far has been Teaching Reading with Colleen Abraham.
“It’s one of the hardest classes for an early education major,” she said. “It’s all about phonics, decoding – all the hard stuff you need to know as a teacher. I loved it because we got to teach at Franklin School as one of our pre-practicums. My brother went to Franklin so I knew where all the classrooms were and how the school worked.”
Despite being a commuter student, Keamy wanted to join the Warrior community wherever she could. She plays flute in the Merrimack Marching Band, serves as vice president of the Student Education Association of Massachusetts club and works as an FYS mentor.
“It’s very difficult to get involved (as a commuter),” she lamented. “We don’t meet many people. We show up for classes and that’s it. I wanted to get involved because I wanted to meet new people and get to know Merrimack. That’s what I recommend to all commuter students. Get involved – you’ll learn a lot.”
