UNK grad Emme Brown teaches little minds big lessons
Emme Brown, a kindergarten teacher at Sumner-Eddyville-Miller Schools, celebrates with her students last week after earning a master’s degree from UNK.
SUMNER — At the beginning of each school year, Emme Brown gathers her kindergartners at Sumner-Eddyville-Miller Schools to read “The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be” by Joanna Gaines.
The book celebrates children of all kinds, some in wheelchairs and others wearing glasses, using their creativity to build hot air balloons. On the final page, the balloons fill the sky, each one a different color, shape and size.
“See how beautiful it can be when our differences share the same sky?” the last line reads.
For Brown, that message is more than a lesson – it’s a way of life.
The University of Nebraska at Kearney graduate was born with dwarfism, and she uses that part of who she is to teach some of the most important lessons in her classroom: love, kindness and acceptance.
Emme Brown holds degrees in elementary, early childhood and special education from UNK. She teaches kindergarten at Sumner-Eddyville-Miller Schools.
“It shows them it’s OK to be different,” she said. “That’s something we talk about a lot.”
After earning her bachelor’s degree in elementary and early childhood education from UNK, Brown began teaching kindergarten at S-E-M.
She quickly noticed a growing number of students with distinct learning needs entering her classroom.
That realization led her back to UNK, where she earned a master’s degree in special education during last week’s spring commencement.
“I wanted my master’s to be meaningful,” Brown said. “I wanted it to impact my career and not just be something you do as a teacher.”
Along with the degree, she added a special education endorsement, allowing her to teach K-12 special education classes.
However, she doesn’t plan to leave kindergarten anytime soon.
“Kindergarten is the best – I’ll stay there forever,” Brown said with a smile. “I want to be the person who loves them and creates a space where they know they belong.”
Although she calls her classroom “structured chaos,” it’s everything a kindergarten classroom should be and more. It’s a colorful space full of creativity and hands-on learning, which you can see in her end-of-the-year ABC countdown.
Like many teachers, Brown has a countdown to the last day of school, but she adds a little kindergarten flair to hers. Her ABC countdown is a 26-day celebration where students dress up using a specific theme that begins with each letter of the alphabet.
Starting with the letter Z, the class goes through the alphabet backward, ending the school year with the letter A.
On the first day of the countdown, Brown and her students dressed in black-and-white stripes to resemble zebras.
Her favorite day is the letter Q, when she hosts the Q and U wedding.
On this special day, Brown turns her classroom into a wedding chapel, creating an aisle lined with little chairs in the center of the room.
At the end of the aisle there’s an image of a white terrace with flowers displayed on the board.
The kindergartners arrive to school that morning donning their finest attire. They also decorate paper crowns and neckties for the ceremony.
Two lucky students are selected to represent the bride and groom; one wearing a crown with the letter Q on it and the other a crown with the letter U.
The pair walk down the aisle surrounded by their friends and classmates. While officiating the ceremony, Brown reminds the class that Q and U are always used together.
They seal the union with a high-five, and their classmates join in the celebration by throwing balloons and confetti into the air.
Brown enjoys dressing up with her class for these themed days, but she tries to inspire creativity through her wardrobe every day.
“I love to wear fun, colorful, silly outfits – kindergarten teacher outfits if you will,” she said.
Last year, she decided to share a daily video of her ABC countdown outfit on her TikTok account.
“It just blew up,” she said.
Brown’s content typically showcases her outfit of the day as a kindergarten teacher, but she also shares events and lessons she teaches in the classroom.
She’s posted videos and photos of her Q and U wedding and classroom décor for a Valentine’s Day party, which has more than 8 million views.
Her more than 67,000 followers often comment on her videos, saying they wish they had a teacher like her growing up.
“People always say that I’m TikTok famous,” Brown said with a laugh. “I guess I kind of am.”
Although she likes to think it’s her cute outfits that get the attention, Brown really believes it’s because people enjoy seeing teachers who truly love what they do.
“I think there’s some negativity around teaching right now, that teachers don’t care or they don’t want to teach,” she said. “I think my content has really helped people know there are teachers who still love their jobs – at least I do.”
In fact, she loves her job so much that when she realized she couldn’t attend UNK’s commencement ceremony, she created her own celebration with 15 of her favorite people.
Wearing a graduation cap, gown and hood, she walked across the front of her kindergarten classroom to accept a mock diploma from one of her students.
Her classroom erupted with cheers; louder than any crowd she would have had at UNK’s Health and Sports Center.
For Brown, the moment was never about the stage. It was all about her students.
