Molly Johnsen

Social Studies Instructor - Appointed 2025

Graduate Degrees

M.A. English, Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College
M.F.A. Creative Writing (Poetry), Syracuse University

Undergraduate Degree

B.A. English, Hispanic Studies minor, University of Pennsylvania

Inspirational Quote

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion

Interests & Hobbies

I love to spend time with my husband and two children, write poetry and nonfiction, read, travel to cities and beaches, exercise outside, cuddle my cat (when she allows it), eat maple creemees, and find secret swimming holes.

Brief Biography

I grew up in Rhode Island where I attended public school for first through eighth grade. For high school, I switched to the private school where my mom was an English teacher. Determined to
go to college in a big city. I wound up in Philadelphia. As a freshman, I resolved to study anything but English – my parents had both majored in it. I graduated with a degree in English. I even headed straight into the Bread Loaf Master’s program at Middlebury the summer after college.

My first job was a one-year sabbatical replacement as a middle school English and History teacher at the Lycée International outside of Paris. After that, I moved to D.C. and commuted to Annapolis, MD, to teach seventh grade English and Civics. Itching to get to the ultimate big city, I found a job teaching middle school English at Horace Mann in the Bronx, and I moved into an apartment near friends in Brooklyn. Five years later, I left to pursue my MFA at Syracuse University.

While my husband and I moved to Vergennes in the heart of Covid, we’re adamant that we always wanted to wind up in Vermont (it’s true!). I found an administrative job in the English Department at Middlebury College, where I also taught a Storytelling course for their Winter Term. I’m thrilled to now be teaching seventh grade Social Studies at VCS and raising my two children in Addison. My collection of poems, Everything Alive, is forthcoming with Green Writers Press (October 2025).