In this blog entry, I’m going to showcase Margaret Kelly, a 2017 graduate of the Master of Arts in the Teaching of Languages (MATL) program. I first “met” her in summer 2014 when Margaret was a student my French film course, the first online graduate course that I ever taught. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the orientation for new teaching assistants that fall and saw Margaret there. She spent the next three years in Hattiesburg completing a triple emphasis in Spanish, French, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). We have known each other for over a decade now, and we still keep in touch. She is a gifted language user, a creative teacher and researcher, and an enthusiastic and thoughtful friend.
Read about Margaret’s journey to the MATL and what she has done since. As always, if you want more information about the MATL or want to be put in touch with Margaret, click on “Contact the MATL.”
Dr. Katie Angus: Margaret, why don't you start off by telling us about your path? What brought you to the MATL?
Margaret Kelly: I majored in Romance Languages in my undergrad. I did French and Spanish, but French was very, very hard for me. Spanish is so phonetic, and everything is spelled the way it sounds, but French was very difficult because the grammar rules are a little bit different, and there's some extra words and extra rules that they have for certain things that aren't in Spanish or in English.
It was very difficult, and so I decided that if I wasn't going to lose it, and if I wanted to keep doing French, I needed to move abroad, so I was an au pair for a year in France for a French family. Part of my role as an au pair was to teach the younger kids English but really be an English tutor for the older child. Through that I realized how much I loved sharing languages, how much I love being able to talk about the ins and the outs of grammar, culture, vocabulary, and all the different things that encompass teaching languages.
While I was living in France, I literally Googled “teaching master's degrees” or something along those lines, and Southern Miss was the first one that popped up. I was able to do it online so at the time I was living abroad and wanted to go ahead and get started I didn't know what my next step was after my contract ended in so that's how I found the MATL was online. I took my first class with you, Dr. Angus. I still remember: I had this amazing room in the house where the family lived, and I would just sit there and participate in classes and be writing my stuff after taking the kids to school and everything. It was so amazing to take that first step. Then, that summer, Dr. Burnett was over in France with a study abroad program, and I got to meet her and she mentioned maybe the possibility of me coming to Hattiesburg to be a TA. My parents said, “Absolutely, we'd love to not have pay for your degree.” So I also said, “Absolutely, I would love to have the hands-on experience.” I came to Southern Miss, and I was actually a Spanish TA because there wasn't a position for French open at the time. That first semester was rough after having spoken French for an entire year and not using Spanish at all.
Dr. Katie Angus: So you were an on-campus student and a TA. How would you describe your time in the MATL?
Margaret Kelly: I think I would describe it in one word first, and then many words. At first, I would probably use the word “transformative.” I had zero experience teaching. I had been an au pair, my mom had been a teacher, but she was in a very different kind of realm than I was teaching. She taught elementary, so she taught everything versus concentrating on one particular subject. And so for me, coming to Hattiesburg, coming to university, being a TA and a student on campus, I think was very transformative, because I was able to take the things that I was learning in class and then apply them to the classes I was teaching.
One thing I really liked about how the TA program was structured was that you got a year of shadowing another TA first, so you were able to teach different activities here and there, you would have a formal observation from your mentor TA while you taught a full-length class. It was a really great way to break into what it means to teach. You're having all these theoretical courses, you're watching the practical application of that in the classroom with a TA you're shadowing, and then you get these little glimpses of what it will be like before you're actually in the classroom. Even after having a year of classes and shadowing, there's still so many things that I learned the second and the third year in the program that I was able to take in and apply to my classes. It was awesome when you get to the end of the program, and you have your final project that you have to turn in instead of a thesis, because a lot of the things that I use in that project were things that I had worked on and perfected throughout the many semesters of me teaching on campus.
Another thing that was really incredible was I had the experience of the opportunity to teach multiple languages. I taught Spanish, but I also taught English at the ELI (English Language Institute), which is sadly, no longer, but it was an amazing experience. There is such a dynamic nature in this program that if you do multiple languages, the department has the opportunity to let you teach multiple languages. That was something that was very, very instrumental in my formation as an educational professional, that I would have the opportunity from the very beginning to teach multiple languages and see that not everything is one size fits all for different languages. There's different approaches, different things you have to consider when teaching more than one language.
Dr. Katie Angus: So you graduated in 2017 with all three emphases in French, Spanish, and TESOL. What are you doing now?
Margaret Kelly: I took a year off, and I taught high school, which was a great experience. Then I went back to school, and I’m getting my PhD. I'm about a month and a half out from actually defending my dissertation. I have been at Vanderbilt for the past six years. At the MATL I had been doing lots of teaching, but here I had one crash course because not everyone who comes to this program has experience in teaching so they kind of give you a semester as a crash course of pedagogical strategies and methodologies your first semester. The MATL was something I was very, very grateful for.
At Vanderbilt, my degree is in Spanish and Portuguese Literature, but I've taught majority language classes. You might be a literature specialist, but you're going to teach language classes. So that's currently what I'm doing. I’m finishing up my six year program at Vanderbilt.
Dr. Katie Angus: Okay, so I do want to talk more about teaching. But, of course, I have to ask you to tell me a little bit about your dissertation.
Margaret Kelly: Oh my gosh, a topic I have hundreds of pages I can talk to you about. In brief what it is, it's about 21st century works of science and speculative fiction from Latin America. I have books from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, and I look at how the narratives interact with the natural environment, how it appears, how the narratives set readers up to watch this destruction of the binary relationship between humanity and nature, how we look at these different ideological barriers that we have between these two categories, and how these narratives actually work to undo them and show them that ultimately, we are nature.
Dr. Katie Angus:That sounds fascinating. And you got to read some interesting books along the way.
Margaret Kelly: So many interesting books! I think that’s the thing that I'm really excited about. No matter where I end up going and teaching, there's so many opportunities with a lot of these new novels. These contemporary science fiction works, they're still kind of under the radar, and are not quite canonical works yet that you would find in every classroom across languages.
Dr. Katie Angus: Okay, going back, you said that you've been at Vanderbilt for six years, and then you were at Southern for three, which is longer than usual, because you were studying all the emphases and that takes time. That’s a lot of teaching. What has been your favorite class to teach so far? And why?
Margaret Kelly: I have a couple of them. I had the opportunity to teach a film course, which is really exciting, because it allowed me to take my interests and apply it to a different medium than what I normally do. That was really fun. Getting to talk to students, with more involvement and though more of a socio-cultural socio-historical lense than what you get into, in some of the language courses.
But I have to say, some of my favorite classes to teach are the 101 courses. There’s something so special about getting to be this first point of contact for students with a language and a culture. They don't know anything or much about it, or they might have some preconceived notions. You're able to show them that first of all, this language is not a monolith. There's so many different communities that that utilize this language. I love to be like a door to the language. I bring members of the languages community to speak on very important issues. I bring activists and journalists and different writers and politicians and people who are the voices of the different languages that I teach. That's what I really like to do. That way, it's not me representing the language, but I'm merely just bringing these different sources and resources for students to experience the language through the voices of its own community.
Dr. Katie Angus: Nice. I love 101 too! So now that you've been a graduate student for a master's program, and you're finishing out your PhD, I'm sure you have plenty of advice for graduate students in world languages. Hit me with something.
Margaret Kelly: One thing I would say is “see how languages can work for you.” Something that I really learned as a student and have continued learning is that you should see how languages work for you. Find what you want to do, and have languages be a part of that. I think that it can't be over stressed enough that that languages are such an incredible part of the workforce. I have chosen to go on to do my PhD. Languages have literally paid my way through my masters and PhD. But it's not just for people who want to stay in academia, it can be something that's , exterior to that. There's always a way that languages can serve you in the future. As you know, my husband is in education. He is constantly saying, “I wish I knew Spanish better, I wish I could speak Spanish, I wish he could speak Arabic, I wish I could speak all these different languages.” Where he's at, they speak 40 different languages at the school. Literally any language is such a tool. If you look at people like my brother, who are in more of the finance area. He's like, “I wish I spoke other languages. It would, help me go further. We have people on our team, who are from other countries, they have different plants in other parts of the world. I'd be able to go more international with my role.” So just see how, languages work for you.
For someone who’s in academia, as a graduate student, I would say, find ways to make your research serve your class, and vice versa. I think that one should feed the other, and it should be like a cycle. They should never be two separate things. For example, as I’m researching, I’ll find books, different activists, different writers, or a poem, and I think “oh, my gosh, that would go really well with this thing I’m teaching.” Find ways to have them go hand in hand, rather than be like two sides of who you are as a professional.
Dr. Katie Angus: Such a good piece of advice. And if there's anyone out there reading this, who's thinking about the MATL and hasn't decided yet, what would you tell them?
Margaret Kelly: I would tell them to do it. Personally, I always knew that teaching would be a part of my career. I love teaching. Doing the MATL and having that foundational knowledge of pedagogy and different teaching methodologies has really helped me within the next step and being able to focus on the next things and so instead of starting at Vanderbilt never having taught before, it allowed me to come in with some confidence. Like, at least I had this handled. I know that I'm a good teacher. I know that I can instruct students in languages. I'm able to now focus all my energy on switching from more of a scientific approach to languages to a more literary approach to languages. It allowed me to really feel successful in my next steps of teaching, even when I was teaching high school for a public school system. I also felt like I had a good handle on what I needed to do in order to teach students, and so it really prepared me. It made me feel very confident in the classroom. There's feedback that I've gotten from my coordinators and outside evaluators who have come and observed me. They've been like, Is this your first time teaching?” And I'm like, “No, I have.” I’ve even gotten some teaching awards at Vanderbilt. I continuously use the things that I learned in the MATL program to this day. It is something that has shaped me. I would say absolutely do it.
I would also say some of my nearest and dearest are people that I met in the MATL program, not only professors that I have kept up with, but really my cohort in the MATL. We were not only just such great friends and support groups then, but I really do keep in contact with most of them. If I don't talk to them, whenever I see them, we just pick up right where we left off. It's really the support system that has lasted. It been now seven years since I graduated, and it's been such a special bond with amazing people that I'm so thankful that I still get to walk through life with. It's been an amazing experience.
Dr. Katie Angus: My favorite part of the MATL is the people. The students come from all over, and they all have such interesting experiences to contribute to classroom discussions. Keeping up with them after the years and seeing where they're going is so cool. Anyway, my last question for you. With teaching with research, you've got a lot going on. But what do you like to do in your free time, when you have any?
Margaret Kelly: As I'm getting older, I love getting outside. I live in a very small apartment, so I don’t have a ton of space. We love to go to like garden centers and just walk around. I like hiking-- I did the Camino Santiago last year. I also really love trash TV, where I can switch my mind off and just watch the thing. I also currently have four foster kittens at my house. I love to foster, and I'm a volunteer at a local animal rescue. Those are the three things that I do whenever I either procrastinating or have free time. I watch trash TV, do something outside or with plants, or pull kittens off the street.
Dr. Katie Angus: When you were in Hattiesburg, you were helping with the stray animals on campus then too, right?
Margaret Kelly: Yeah, it's something that started there. I was like, “I'm an adult, I can make this decision to take this cat off the street. I don't have to ask anyone's permission.” It hasn't stopped much. My husband’ll come home and find kittens living in his living room, and I'm like, “They're going to stay with us for a couple of weeks.”
Dr. Katie Angus: I totally appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. It's always a joy to catch up with you, and I love seeing all the great things that you're up to. I can't wait to see where you end up, soon-to-be Dr. Margaret Kelly.
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