Talking the Walk

Alumna Martha G. Abbott holds her beanie, requisite wear long ago for MWC freshmen.

Alumna Martha G. Abbott holds her beanie,
requisite wear long ago for MWC freshmen.
Photo by Norm Shafer

By definition, teachers are leaders. They “take people to a place where they couldn’t have gone without them,” Martha G. Abbott ’72 told a crowd at UMW’s Stafford campus in April.

The university’s fourth educator-in-residence, Abbott is executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

She gave graduates advice on impacting students’ lives and how to find success in a teaching career. “You need to have the fundamental attitude that all kids can learn,” Abbott said. “They have to feel that you think that they can learn.”

Before entering the nonprofit sector, Abbott spent three decades with Fairfax County Public Schools. She majored in Spanish and minored in Latin at Mary Washington and earned a master’s degree in Spanish linguistics from Georgetown University.

A 2004 UMW Distinguished Alumnus, Abbott also has been president of the Foreign Language Association of Virginia and chaired the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.