Kellyanne Mahoney
Kellyanne Mahoney is a Cohort 2 BTR graduate. She completed her residency at the McCormack School, and currently teaches middle school English Language Arts at Boston Latin Academy, from which she graduated.
Before she joined BTR, Kellyanne worked as a correspondent for the Boston Globe. She has also worked for the Boston Herald and the Dorchester Reporter; her experiences with the city’s newspapers led her to return to the BPS so that she could share her knowledge of writing and editing with Boston’s students.
Inspiration to teach:
The author and former teacher Frank McCourt. I was interviewing him over the phone for a story I was reporting for the Boston Globe. I appreciated his humility, common sense, wit and candor, and suspected it did not originate from his career as a writer.
About my students:
My identity as a learner was most dramatically refined during my six years as a student at Boston Latin Academy, an exam school that for many students is second choice to Boston Latin School. As a newly-minted seventh-grader, for example, I was pleased to meet other kids who seemed to share my quirky admiration for quiet suffering and empathy for social rejects. We mostly hailed from lower-middleclass neighborhoods where we discovered that it was not always advantageous to stand out intellectually. As a result it seemed the majority of my classmates fell into one of two categories: the exceptionally bright who had resisted toeing the academic line for fear of vicious social persecution; and the marginally bright who had managed to hone their academic skills despite vicious social persecution, driven by their stronger discomfort with the idea of being in the perpetual company of dullards. Being “second-tier” also required a degree of humility. We were bound to the mystery of not knowing everything.
About BTR:
All the mushy cliches I can think of are actually true. It also validated my belief that sleep deprivation builds character.
Favorite Thing in the World To Do:
Hug my daughter.
Random thought:
Pigeons are my favorite animal, and so I was horrified when I accidentally ate one in Spain.
Recently by Kellyanne
RSS Feed4.21.10 - The Knock
The story begins with a knock at the door. I am in my classroom late on a Friday afternoon. LATE for this school, I explain to my students. Very late. My seventh-graders are new to the building, I figure. They are used to schools… [more]
4 comments so far
1.27.10 - A Moving Target
It is embarrassing to admit that last weekend was the first time I picked up a newspaper in possibly over a year. This is embarrassing mostly because I had once been the staunchest advocate for print newspapers, beginning when I sat with tiny ink-smeared… [more]
0 comments so far
12.08.09 - Honor
Thud! Thud! Thud! Namir was pounding vociferously on his desk. Soon about a dozen other students were imitating him in a thunderous cacophony.
This is not the beginning of some teacher’s nightmare, but rather the opposite. The Honorable Judge Namir, or so I… [more]
2 comments so far
11.12.09 - The Look
The majority of masterful teachers will be able to demonstrate to you the crippling prowess of their unique and finely cultivated “teacher look”—this is the glare that teachers use to convey the sheer terror and magnitude of their earnest and wholesome authority toward unruly… [more]
1 comments so far
11.06.09 - Objective
As I boarded the wooden spaceship reverberating with the sounds of Parliament Funkadelic, I noticed professors in tweedy blazers weaving through the fog and lights and crowd. They were carrying clipboards and seemed to be taking this gig, set in the thicket behind a… [more]
0 comments so far
