{"id":12473,"date":"2026-09-30T13:47:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T13:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=12473"},"modified":"2026-10-01T15:00:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T15:00:44","slug":"alum-spotlight-m-l-kenney-18-on-graduate-school-teaching-and-risk-taking","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-september-26\/alum-spotlight-m-l-kenney-18-on-graduate-school-teaching-and-risk-taking\/","title":{"rendered":"Alum Spotlight: M.L. Kenney \u201918 on Graduate School, Teaching, and Risk-Taking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

by Paul Wallace ’27<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month, The Words <\/em>caught up with Macalester graduate M.L. Kenney \u201918 to talk about life after graduation. While at Macalester, M.L. studied English Literature and Critical Theory. Outside of her studies, she pursued several internships in public humanities and English teaching. After graduation, M.L. continued in public service and teaching English while earning an M.S. in Secondary Literacy and Special Education from Johns Hopkins University. M.L. currently divides her time between pursuing a Masters degree in English from Middlebury College\u2019s prestigious Bread Loaf School of English and teaching English to students with learning disabilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

M.L., like many college graduates, felt nervous about her future. Though she excelled at Macalester and in her undergraduate internships, she still felt uncertain about her career goals. She knew, however, that she needed to tease out her ambitions not just through reflection, but through action. To build on her experience teaching English to young people, M.L. worked for AmeriCorps in Minneapolis, an endeavor which inspired her to move to Washington, D.C., and apply for the Urban Teaching Program at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s School of Education. This moment replicated a pattern that began during M.L.\u2019s time at Macalester and has continued since: the cultivation of her own education and others\u2019 through simultaneous learning and teaching. These experiences helped M.L. recognize three key aspects of her desired career: equity, literature, and working with people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon completing her first masters degree, M.L. began teaching English to students at a D.C. area school. At the same institution, she became a case manager for Individualized Education Plans, legal documents that outline accommodations and specialized support for students with learning disabilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While M.L. felt fulfilled by the importance of her work, she missed the challenging intellectual life of higher education. While a friend of hers had informed her about the masters program at Bread Loaf years earlier, M.L. felt intimidated by the application. She admitted that for several years, she opened the application but became overwhelmed and failed to start it. After encouragement from her partner however, she worked up the courage to develop an application. M.L. credits current and former Macalester English and Creative Writing professors Penelope Geng and Amy Elkins with proofreading and providing feedback on her application essays. Geng\u2019s and Elkins\u2019 knowledge of academia and the Bread Loaf program imbued their feedback with critical insight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To M.L.\u2019s joy, the Bread Loaf program accepted her. During the school year, M.L. continues to teach English to students with learning disabilities. In the summers, she relocates to Vermont to study English. In many ways, Bread Loaf echoes M.L.\u2019s time at Macalester. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She praises \u201cthe small community [which is] very liberal arts-like\u2014intimate, [with] lots of traditions [and] very literary and engaged people.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courses M.L. enjoyed include \u2018The Wild(e) 1890s,\u2019 \u2018Plays and Politics on the Global Stage,\u2019 \u2018Using Theater in the Classroom,\u2019 and \u2018Anna Karenina<\/em> and The Brothers Karamazov<\/em>.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

M.L. also appreciates\u201cthe deep focus and sense of achievement, in part due to how easy it is to unplug on a tiny campus when you can leave your phone in a dorm room all day and don’t have a full-time job to do.\u201d She read \u201cwell upwards of two thousand pages last summer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside enhancing M.L.\u2019s intellectual life, Bread Loaf also supports her work as a teacher through its Teacher Network which, as she describes it, is \u201call about building community with each other across school contexts that can feel isolating and frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For current Macalester students and recent graduates, M.L. stresses the importance of taking risks and trying different jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to do it to know it,\u201d she says. \u201cThe more you put off deciding [what\u2019s right for you], the more decisions are made for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also encourages students to \u201cbuild your academic stamina\u201d in the age of short-form content and tools like generative artificial intelligence which prioritize instant gratification and efficiency over persistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPut your phone away,\u201d she said. \u201cTake on that big project.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to stay grounded, M.L. reminds herself and her students to turn to literature. When writing and reading feel daunting, she says, \u201clet the words wash over you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to M.L. for her time and wisdom and thank you to our readers for letting The Words <\/em>\u201cwash over\u201d you! For any readers interested in learning more about teaching and graduate school, please feel free to reach out to M.L. directly at kenneym.l.2018@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Paul Wallace ’27 This month, The Words caught up with Macalester graduate M.L. Kenney \u201918 to talk about life after graduation. While at Macalester, M.L. studied English Literature and Critical Theory. Outside of her studies, she pursued several internships in public humanities and English teaching. After graduation, M.L. continued in public service and teaching […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1389,"featured_media":0,"parent":12477,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12473","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12473"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12691,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12473\/revisions\/12691"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}