Faculty Profile — Nancy McMahon

35 years of meaning

By Larry D. Hansen and Steffany Happ

In 35 years at MATC, part-time English instructor Nancy McMahon has witnessed changes she could “never have imagined” when she entered her first MATC classroom, in 1973.

This was a generation before the terms “online” and “hybrid” rolled off the lips of students looking for “flexible offerings” of courses. This was before the desktop computer was even invented, and Bill Gates was still a gangly high schooler figuring out what to do in life.

Students back in “those days,” McMahon said with a wink, had to write their essays on a manual typewriter and “physically go to the library to check out books.”

“Electronics has changed everything,” she declared. Then, after a moment of silence, she added that one aspect of life hasn’t changed at all: war.

Thirty-five years ago, her students had just come back from Vietnam. Today, some of her students today are just returning from Iraq; others are thinking about enlisting in the military.

“So much has changed in life, yet so much has not changed in life,” McMahon said, solemnly.

Farmer’s daughter becomes an academic

McMahon now teaches English 1 and Written Communications to students who walk into her classroom holding iPods, cell phones, and laptops. However, this English instructor was raised on a Hollandale farm, just south of Dodgeville, that had no television at all. The primary form of nightly entertainment for McMahon and her five siblings was reading books, newspapers, and magazines. The McKenzie kids (McKenzie is her maiden name) were “all readers,” she says..

It was this love of reading that propelled the second eldest McKenzie child to excel in literature in high school and, later, to obtain two English degrees from the University of Wisconsin/Platteville: a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in English Education and a Master's of Science Degree in Teaching/English.

After marrying a fellow UW/Platteville student, Paul McMahon, Nancy and her husband moved to Madison where Paul, a Vietnam War veteran, found an administrative job with the state government. Then Nancy started teaching at MATC; her first communications class consisted of young men who had just returned from the Vietnam War and had enrolled as electronic technician students.

Shortly after starting her MATC career, the McMahons began a family of their own with two daughters and one son. Raising her family became Nancy’s priority in life, and this is the reason she has always preferred teaching part-time rather than full-time.

“I had always wanted to focus on the family,” she said, smiling. “But I was fortunate to be able to still teach part-time at MATC. I had the best of both worlds.”

In her 35 years at MATC, McMahon has taught many different types of English and communications courses at campuses such Commercial Avenue, Downtown and Truax. She has also taught MATC courses in unusual settings, such as the Oakhill Correctional Institute and at a Madison Fire Department station. “If there was a two-alarm fire, I was down to about two students,” McMahon added with her trademark hearty laugh.

Teaching thousands of students these past 35 years, this part-time English instructor’s memories are clear and remarkably vivid. She remembers when a young Jon Erpenbach, now a well-known Wisconsin state senator, took her class simply to brush up on his writing and communication skills to prepare himself for a career in politics. “Back then, Jon was great helping others in class,” she added. She also recalls the unique Art Paul Schlosser, now a locally-known street musician who also has had his own public cable TV show, when he took a Saturday morning class of hers.

And she sees many of her former students frequently in the hallways of MATC, such as police officers patrolling the campuses; Mary Kuhn, an administrative assistant in the Center for Arts and Sciences; and Anton Stute, now a metalworking instructor at MATC, who wrote an essay that McMahon will never forget.

“Tony (Anton) wrote a great paper,” she said. “It was a narrative based on one of his life experiences. You see, Tony was once flown to Colorado and was paid to drive a car back to Madison. I forget what kind of car it was, but it was a cool car of some sort. This was a kid’s dream job. And it was a great paper.”

Teaching all of these students for these 35 years has caused McMahon to draw a few conclusions about the world of MATC.

Diversity

First, local residents not familiar with MATC are generally unaware of the diverse student population here. McMahon has had students from all parts of the world -- “including Iceland,” she added. And this diversity makes for interesting experiences in the classroom. For instance, two Hmong brothers in one of her English classes wrote a process paper about how to kill a pig. The essay was much more than simply describing the process of slaughtering a pig, she said. It was an insight into the Hmong culture, and the cultural complexities that lay beneath this Hmong ritual.

After the brothers completed the paper and handed it in, they were required to give an oral presentation of the essay – all students had to also give speeches about what they wrote. McMahon said that this oral presentation was fascinating for both students and the teacher.

“The brothers talked about how they had to slaughter another pig because a grandmother thought they hadn’t done it right the first time,” McMahon said. “In this culture, the slaughter of a pig is a cultural process. It’s very interesting.”

Attention Span

McMahon also believes that the MATC student today has a “shorter” attention span than the student from three decades ago. She understands why, as students today have so many choices and options; they have become accustomed to a fast-paced world in which information can be found with the push of one computer key. An example of this occurs when her students are required to write essays and reports based on secondary research.

“So many students will go to the Internet and give up too easily, sometimes within a matter of minutes, if they don’t get the information they need right away. And I have to constantly reinforce the notion that research times time – a lot of time,” she said. “Yes, the attention span has definitely changed.”

Students do “too much”

McMahon feels that another key difference between MATC students today and those a generation ago is that going to school full-time while working full-time was rare in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, it is quite common.

She explained, “Certain expectations have changed. It used to be that students never thought they could successfully do both – work full-time and go to school full-time. Sure, they had jobs, but these were part-time and were meant to work around the student’s school schedule. Today, many students have full-time jobs and go to school full-time, and many expect that this is possible. Then, the schoolwork is arranged in such a way that it works around the full-time job. Meaning, it comes second, in some instances.”

The plight of the part-time instructor has improved

For the first 15 of her 35 years at MATC, McMahon taught in isolation. She never had contact with full-time instructors and had never gone to a professional conference to share teaching experiences with other teachers. That has changed, she said. Today, the part-time English instructor is vitally connected to the Department, she explains, as they are invited to department meetings and “get paid for it.” They also have the opportunity to sit on department committees, attend conferences, and engage in professional development activity with other full-time and part-time instructors. In addition, the pay has improved, she added, but the pay per hour of work is far from being equivalent to the full-time instructor.

“Yes, the pay has improved, but we’ve still got a long way to go on that, “said McMahon, who was one of the founders of the MATC Part-Time Teachers Union.

It’s all about the students

After all these years, and all of these experiences as a part-time instructor, McMahon sits back and reflects on a question posed by the interviewer: “Why are you a part-time instructor here at MATC?” After first hearing the question, a long and robust laugh rolls out. Then the veteran teacher settles into a soft smile, followed by a quiet moment of contemplation. This English teacher prefers to answer this question by telling a story.

It is the story that occurred three years ago. And it is of a young male student, about 20 years old, in one of her English classes at the Downtown campus. This particular class, she remembers, took a field trip to the Orpheum Theatre to listen to a panel discussion by Veterans for Peace. Afterward, the class would write responses to this experience. Just prior to this field trip, the young male student had told McMahon that he was going to sign up for the military, and he fully understood that he might end up fighting in Iraq. When the male student saw and heard a panelist with only one arm talk about the pain of his war injuries, McMahon’s student came to a realization: The military was not for him.

“This student was about to be offered $10,000 to sign up for the military, and to his kid, $10,000 was an awful lot of money,” McMahon said. “This kid later comes up to me and says, ‘You have changed my life. When I saw that panelist with only one arm, I said to myself that $10,000 is not enough for losing an arm.”

It is this story, and thousands of others, that motivates McMahon to keep on doing what what she has done here for 35 years. This English instructor sees the importance of helping her students communicate more effectively, either on paper or in front of others. She also understands that, at times, she can have a far greater impact on them: Through her assignments, and her guidance, she can help these individuals see themselves, and the life around them, more clearly.

At the same time, though, Nancy McMahon is greatly impacted by her students. Their personal stories – their struggles and their drive to improve their lives – are inspirational to their English instructor.

“Why do I do this?’” she reflected. “It’s all about the students.”

Larry D. Hansen is an MATC journalism instructor, and Steffany Happ is an MATC Journalism Certificate student.

(Note: Photo taken by Paul McMahon.)