Hello everyone,

My name is Gavin Thomas Nicholls Layman. My wife, Heidi, and I live in Charlottesville, Virginia. We have been married since December of 2018. I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, a few blocks away from the ODU campus, until my family decided that we were tired of the busy schedule of living in the city. We moved to Charlottesville in 2004 where my siblings and I began homeschooling and attending a co-op from elementary school through high school. I started classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College when I was 15 and received 2 Associate’s Degrees when I graduated.

I currently work at Walton Middle School as a Special Education Teaching Assistant in a program called B-Base with students who are diagnosed with emotional disabilities. My days with them are spent building need-meeting relationships, navigating public education dynamics, and utilizing Dr. William Glasser’s educational and therapeutic philosophy, Choice Theory, as a way to help our students get what they need emotionally by getting what they want for their quality world. Looking ahead, I plan to, with the completion of my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, move out of my assistant position and into a teaching position so that I can spread and create my own need-fulfilling classroom environment for other students who are in need. The research performed and found in cross-cultural and social psychology will be extremely useful to me in my career through understanding the many cultural differences found within a public school setting, the social norms and expectations easily seen within the context of middle school age students, and the more generalized broad scope of how young people are affected by both large and small scale psychological factors. I’m looking forward to learning with each of you along the way.

Best and Peace,

Gavin