Hannah Phillips

I also continue to look back on the amazing professors and instructors I had at MSU. I still mimic some of their lessons and practices in my classroom: good teachers make good teachers.

Name:

Hannah Phillips

MSU Degree:

B.A. In English, 2020

Any other degrees:

M.A. in English, 2023

Favorite memories of being an undergraduate English major:

I really remember the community associated within the English major. Professors and students alike all had a common goal, I think. We all wanted to read books and think big ideas. It felt good – satisfying – to be able to sit and talk with like-minded people every day and to learn from professors who were leaders in their field and who respected me as an academic and as a person.

Current Position:

Dual Credit English Teacher

Organization:

Southaven High School, Southaven, Mississippi

When you graduated with a degree in English from MSU, what were your plans for your future? Has your career path mostly realized those early plans, or have you discovered new plans and goals along the way?

I knew when I graduated from MSU that I wanted to go to graduate school. I was accepted to the University of Mississippi MA program and completed it in the allotted 3 years. I knew that I wanted to teach, but I did not know what level yet. I went back and forth about whether I wanted to pursue a PhD right away, but I decided I needed to take a break. My father got sick, and I needed to move back to Memphis to be closer to my family. I heard about a job opening at Southaven High School as a dual credit teacher and was hired rather quickly because it is hard to find teachers with MAs in English. Since I had two degrees in English and not education, though, I did not have a Mississippi teaching license. I went through the Teach Mississippi Institute affiliated with the University of Mississippi to get my teaching license. Even though I am a dual credit teacher, I still must be licensed by the State of Mississippi to teach in a high school. The Teach Mississippi Institute is a non-accredited licensure program. There are 2 parts: the first part is a set of 2 online courses that you must pass to get a temporary 3-year teaching license. The second part is your “internship” which is your first-year teaching at a Mississippi school. You complete a portfolio while teaching and receive a 5-year renewable license once you complete the program. It was flexible, quick, and more cost efficient than going back to school for an M.A. in Teaching.

What is your current occupation, and what does your work mostly consist of?

I am a Dual Credit English teacher at Southaven High School in Southaven, MS. With my M.A. in English, I can teach college-level courses. While I would gladly teach at a college if given the chance, full time teaching positions at community colleges and universities are hard to come by (especially just with a master's degree), so when I heard of an opening for a dual credit teacher at a high school, I jumped at the chance. I am employed by the local school district as a full-time teacher, but I am technically an adjunct through Northwest Community College. I teach 11^th and 12^th grade high school students who are enrolled in college courses. I teach both Comp 1 and Comp 2 on a high school campus. It is always a balancing act to determine how far to push these students because, while still technically high school students, they are also college students. Especially in a Title 1 school, meeting students where they are as writers is humbling for me and for them. We are starting from scratch with a lot of these students – a lot of them have never seen MLA format in their lives or might not even know the difference between an adjective and an adverb. We start with grammar and work our way all the way through to using databases for research.

Which skills that you learned as an English major do you use most in your job?

I use the writing skills I learned as an English major the most. Since I teach Composition courses, the bulk of what we do is writing. We start from the basics – thesis statements, organization, word choice, argument, analysis, etc. It is a specific skill set needed to teach writing, and English majors are, obviously, some of the best suited. There is a place to put that MLA knowledge to work. :)

What additional skills did you need to learn in order to do your job, and how did you learn them?

I think that learning basic pedagogical skills was important for this job. I learned them as an undergraduate in my Writing Pedagogy class, but I also learned them in graduate school. As a part of my M.A. program, I was a TA and an instructor of record for First-Year Writing courses. These experiences helped me troubleshoot how to teach writing. That said, learning to teach high schoolers is largely trial and error, but it still requires a certain amount of problem-solving critical thinking skills to figure out how best to organize a course. I also continue to look back on the amazing professors and instructors I had at MSU. I still mimic some of their lessons and practices in my classroom: good teachers make good teachers.

Are there common misconceptions about your career field, which current English majors might share, that you have learned the truth about?

I was always afraid that becoming a high school teacher was a cop-out. I went on to get my M.A. because I thought I had to get my PhD and become a researcher at a university somewhere. I came to realize, though, that teachers are important at any educational level. Teaching makes me happy, and it has honestly been a joy to teach high school. I get to go back to the basics of what made me love reading and writing. I might go back to school one day and work on my PhD (because I do miss a college campus from time to time), but it is also okay to take opportunities when they come and know that there will always be different opportunities down the line. Never sacrifice doing something you love – you won’t regret it.

In what ways does your career enrich your life and help you to achieve your personal as well as your professional goals?

I genuinely love teaching. While I enjoyed researching in college and graduate school, what I love the most is getting to talk with students. There’s something inspiring about watching 17-year-olds decide who and what they want to be in the world, and I like to think that humanities classes play a big part in helping them get there. That is not to say that every day is perfect – most days teaching are a swing and a miss, but on others you really get to be a part of another person’s life story, and that makes a difference. The pay might be too low, and the days might be long, but if you are meant to teach, then you find the good parts.

What advice do you have for undergraduate English majors right now who might want to follow the career path you did?

I’d advise them to pay attention to good teaching practices and seek out opportunities to teach. That might mean shadowing professors on campus, signing up for a tutoring job, volunteering to lead discussion in class, finding texts you might like to teach someday, looking up requirements for a teaching license in your state, etc. Weigh your options and consider going to graduate school out of undergrad if you aren’t quite sure what you want to do yet. A higher degree is never a bad thing, and it can help you figure out what you are good at, be that teaching, creative writing, or research. Know your options for teaching at the university, college, or secondary-education level because one of them might just be a good fit for you one day.

[Updated August 2024]