‘Falling in Love with Teaching’: From Moreland Candidate to Moreland Instructor

Marya Djalal was just trying to volunteer for an after-school program.  

She was a reporter for the Gettysburg Times in Pennsylvania, and the community had a program called Harvesting Friendships. Essentially, the volunteer gig would involve teaching social skills to at-risk youth with oppositional defiance and anger-management issues. 

These were court-ordered classes for children with serious struggles, and Djalal had no experience or qualifications. Looking back, she thinks the smarter thing might have been to say, “No, thank you.” Instead… 

“They say what? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread?” she said. “And so, that’s how I got involved with teaching.” 

Up to that point, Djalal’s career had been focused on journalism. She was a newspaper reporter. She’d worked on newspapers all throughout high school and college. She wanted to be a journalist or an interpreter for the United Nations. 

But the more she worked with the children in Harvesting Friendships, the more she enjoyed it.  

“They taught me everything I needed to know about teaching,” she said. “It was a process. Little by little, I just started falling in love with teaching.” 

Finding a Place to Thrive

Djalal started working full-time for after-school programs, and that was great for a while. But then the economic crisis hit, and one by one, the after-school programs shuttered. 

She moved to France with her husband, and her plan was to start teaching English as a Second Language. 

“I found myself in this conundrum where to really do what I wanted to do with teaching, I had to have a certification,” she said. “I had 25 years of experience, but no certification.” 

She started researching programs but couldn’t find what she needed. She found some programs with online teacher-prep courses, but they required her to go back to the U.S. for her clinical, which she didn’t want to do. Then, she found Moreland University’s TEACH-NOW Teacher Preparation Certificate Program. She applied and joined one of TEACH-NOW’s first cohorts, starting in 2014 and graduating in 2015. As soon as Moreland created its master’s program, Djalal joined the first cohort for that, too, earning her Master’s in Globalization in Education.

Djalal started a tutoring business in the U.S. and France, but what she really wanted — after earning her certification and master’s degree through Moreland — was to work for Moreland. She applied once, no luck. She applied again, still a no. Then on her third try, she got in, and she joined Moreland’s faculty in 2018.  

“I was elated,” she said. “I was so happy, because I really felt like it was a place where I could thrive and I could bring all of my experiences forward.” 

Marya Djalal with her kindergarten class in Nice, France

Continuous Learning and Development

Djalal is quadrilingual, speaking English, French, Spanish, and Farsi, so one of her favorite parts of teaching with Moreland is the global cohort model, where she gets to interact with and learn from candidates from all over the world.  

“I really feel at home in that environment,” she said. “I always say, ‘I’m the lead learner, and you are the co-instructors. I enjoy learning from you as much as I hope you’re learning from the program.’” 

Aside from her work with Moreland, Djalal is on the school board for Upper Adams School District in Pennsylvania. She’s the co-creator of Mis Quince Anos, a bilingual and bicultural program for 15-year-old girls in Gettysburg, PA. And she founded Saint Katharine Drexel International Academy in Nice, France, in 2018-19. Saint Katharine’s didn’t make it through the pandemic, but Djalal learned a lot about making an educational plan and starting a school.

A field trip with Saint Katharine Drexel International Academy

As an educator, Djalal’s main goal is to keep growing and to help others do the same. Here’s one small example: When she first joined Moreland’s faculty, she struggled, for whatever reason, with creating the breakout rooms on Zoom. Every time she tried to bring her cohort back from their breakout rooms, she would get flustered, hit the wrong button, and accidentally end the meeting altogether. 

“I didn’t just do it one time. I did it six times, like six virtual classes in a row,” she said. 

Instead of getting frustrated, her candidates and colleagues encouraged her to keep trying. Now, Djalal is the “queen of breakout rooms.” 

After that cohort graduated, one of the candidates sent a message to Djalal, thanking her for her support. She had encouraged him to press on even when he felt like giving up, he wrote.  

“… I remember you had trouble with putting us into breakout rooms,” he wrote. “That was actually helpful, because it made me realize that I was also in a learning stage, and I didn’t need to have everything all figured out.”  

That culture is what Djalal loves about Moreland, and it’s what she loves about teaching in general. It’s not about perfection. Nobody has it all figured out. You just have to keep learning, keep trying, keep getting better every day.

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