Eric Allatta

Comuter Science and Mathematics Teacher in New York City.

I Built My Portfolio with an LLM---and That’s the Point

I built my teaching portfolio site from scratch.

Custom Jekyll theme. GitHub Pages deploy. Liquid templating. Modular layouts. Markdown everywhere.

But here’s the real thing: I didn’t build it alone.

I used an LLM (ChatGPT, if you’re reading this—hi) to assist with nearly every step. CSS quirks? Prompted it. YAML config oddities? Talked it through. Got stuck in a layout loop? Debugged it together.

Not because I couldn’t figure it out on my own—but because it helped me learn faster. Ask, reflect, revise, deploy. It felt like pair programming with a hallucination that mostly knew what it was doing.

As a self-taught computer science teacher, I’ve always learned while building and teaching at the same time. That’s the job. But integrating LLMs into the process pushed my thinking—and my skills—into new territory.

Here’s the important part: I could harness this tool because I’ve spent years applying a liberal arts framework to computing. I’ve taught myself not just how to write code, but how to think about systems, patterns, and abstraction. That context made all the difference.

And that’s what we need to talk about more.

Context Matters

LLMs are powerful. But access without context isn’t empowerment—it’s just exposure.

If you don’t already know what a templating language is, or why frontmatter matters, or when to question a generated code block—an LLM might give you syntax, but not understanding.

So as these tools enter classrooms, portfolios, and learning spaces, we need:

  • Transparency about how work gets made (including this site)
  • Acknowledgment of the privilege and training that makes tool-use effective
  • Real frameworks for helping students build their own context, so they’re not just copy-pasting their way into frustration

This site? It’s mine. I made the decisions, I wrote the words, I hit commit. But I also had help. Iterative, contextual help. And that’s what made the process actually powerful.

You can view the result here. And yes, it has a version history.

Let’s talk about what it means to teach—and learn—with tools like this. Not just whether students will cheat. But whether they’ll be allowed to try.

2025

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