Ditlevson Haglund joins Forum

Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund

Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund, a writer and teacher, has joined the Maryville Daily Forum as a part-time staff writer.

Ditlevson Haglund recently moved to Maryville from the Dallas area, where she was the Resource Director and taught English as a foreign language to middle and high school students at Willow Bend Academy. In that position, she developed language acquisition curriculum and implemented diagnostic and placement testing methods she learned from working as an independent contractor and language instructor for the language training company Global LT.

“I never really thought I would teach English unless it were literature or writing,” Ditlevson Haglund said. “Once I started with EFL, I realized how much I enjoyed helping people gain a skill that would enhance their lives and make it easier for them to live among native speakers.”

Although Ditlevson Haglund most recently worked in education, she has worked as a journalist and editor since high school.

Ditlevson Haglund grew up in Ashland, Ohio, where she took her first journalism courses at Ashland High School.

“My eighth grade English teacher was a little bit of a hippie,” she said. “He spent a lot of time on poetry and grammar, but he told me I should take a journalism class.

“I had no idea what that meant, but I liked him and I did what he said. Look what happened,” she said.

In high school, Ditlevson Haglund earned more Northeastern Ohio Scholastic Press Association awards for her editorial cartoons than stories, even though she edited the school paper, The Panorama.

“That was funny and also discouraging. Maybe I should have kept up with the cartoons,” she said.

At Ashland University, Ditlevson Haglund edited The Collegian, supervised the development of the university’s first news website, and worked as an intern at The Ashland Times-Gazette. In college, she won awards for the best news series, and department awards in communication arts and English.

After college, Ditlevson Haglund edited two monthly magazines in Wooster, Ohio, where she worked extensively with the Amish.

“I grew up used to seeing horses tied to light poles at Wal-Mart, but I never knew them until I had to earn their trust when writing about them,” she said. “I don’t think I would be the same kind of feature writer if I hadn’t needed to break into such a closed community.” she said.

“I never wanted to overstep any boundaries, but I also wanted to give readers a chance to understand such a misrepresented people,” added Ditlevson Haglund

In 2010, Ditlevson Haglund moved to Texas to earn her master’s degree in English at Baylor University. Her first year, she worked as a graduate assistant with student athletes taking media studies courses and Spanish. During her second year, she worked as an editor for the Baylor Institute for Oral History, which she cited as the highlight of her time at Baylor.

Ditlevson Haglund also said her tenure as a biomedical editor at Cadent Medical Communications changed the way she writes.

“By the time I worked there, I had edited for AP and Chicago styles, but AMA was an entirely different animal,” she said. “It’s not just about being PC but being precise and concise, which isn’t necessarily easy to do when you go directly into medical communications from writing a thesis in an English department. It’s a big adjustment to learn how to stop talking.”

In her spare time, Ditlevson Haglund writes essays for Christ and Pop Culture and various other writing outlets.

Aside from writing, Ditlevson Haglund spends as much time as possible with her family and looks for opportunities for running and hiking. She is casually working on completing a reading list focusing on Nineteenth Century serial fiction.