John Kelly would like a word

But beyond crafted internet musings, an appreciation for the written language is infused throughout his life, from his early days as a dedicated reader to his role with a tech company to today, where one can find him in front of a classroom teaching English to local middle schoolers.

 “I've always been fascinated with words – why they are as they are,” says Kelly. “I love nothing more than immersing myself in a novel or a story in my free time.”

This bookish disposition led Kelly to major in English language and literature during undergraduate studies, following which he worked as both a Summer Enrichment Camp Instructor and Assistant Academic Director roles with the University of Cincinnati’s (UC) College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology (CECH).

“I worked there through the GEAR UP grant,” he explains. “That acronym stands for Gaining Early Awareness for Undergraduate Programs. Through that, I was embedded in some public schools in town, working in such schools as Oyler and Lower Price Hill. We helped low-income students, especially in science and mathematics, to give them some extra support in the classroom. I eschewed the ivory tower of a PhD and felt idealistically I should be serving the youth in our world.”

Following this experience, Kelly secured a position with Cincinnati Public Schools as a Special Education Instructional Assistant at Clark Montessori High School. These back-to-back experiences in education made him realize that what he really wanted was to teach the subject he loves most, English, in a public school setting, so he enrolled in UC’s Master of Education (M.Ed.), Curriculum and Instruction program in pursuit of a graduate degree and teaching license.

During his time in the program, he received invaluable instruction from his professors and points specifically to two instructors, Chet Laine and Steven Kroeger, as deeply impactful in his life. “I actually had the pleasure of bumping into both of them late last year. The three of us got a coffee, and we reminisced,” he says. “I was able to personally thank them for how they shaped who I am as a person in the world. And I mean that.”

Upon graduation and receipt of his teaching license, Kelly received a job offer from Winton Woods City Schools (where he had done his student teaching). But life had other plans for John, setting him on a career path that, against a number of odds, eventually led him right back to where he needed to be.

Kelly says he absolutely would have accepted the Winton Woods offer, but his then-fiancée, who worked in sales, was relocated to Minneapolis. Kelly followed her there, then to Laguna Beach, and in both places he considered licensure but understood his residence would be too temporary to pursue a teaching career. But he continued working in education, volunteering at a Minneapolis school that helped Hispanic and Somali English Language Learners, while in California he worked with adults with autism as an academic coordinator.

“It felt like I was on the cusp of something,” he says. “And my UC education really helped me navigate changes in the classroom and society.”

Following their time in Laguna Beach, the couple moved to Ireland, where Kelly, now married, faced challenges when it came to pursuing employment. “Her work visa allowed her to work,” he explains, “but I had a spousal visa that didn't let me work directly in Ireland.”

So he started the Mashed Radish blog. “I just decided to write about word origins,” he says. “It's something I've always cared about. I was always an exceptional student in Latin and, as a kid, I viewed the world through this kind of restless curiosity about why words are as they are. You know, squirrel – why is the word that way? Or galaxy. What's going on with that word?”

This work led him to exciting freelance writing opportunities, and he began writing articles on language and word origins for Oxford Dictionaries as well as picked up a column about language for Slate. He started another self-directed project in 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, reading all of the bard’s work in a year and writing about it on a blog he called Shakespeare Confidential. The novelty of this venture, he says, led to even more freelance offers with outlets such as Atlas Obscura and Mental Floss.

He also began working with Emojipedia as a freelance Senior Emoji Lexicographer and defining slang words for Dictionary.com. The latter experience led to full-time work as a Senior Research Editor, and over five years Kelly rose through the ranks at Dictionary.com, eventually becoming Vice President of Editorial for the tech company.

“I got to work with a marvelous group of people doing really cool things, including making the dictionary, making the thesaurus, overseeing our social media content, overseeing video, overseeing all of our blogs and related editorial content and products,” he explains. “I also got to do our PR. So when it would be word of the year season or when new words would come out, I would go on TV and radio and talk about how all this stuff works. And I would also answer questions to the media, you know, ‘What is skibidi?’ and ‘What's going on with identity language?’ So topics both fun and frivolous, but also very serious and defining our time.”

The remote role truly felt like the perfect job for Kelly. “For a person who loves words, loves the power of words and loves how words and content about them can help us understand ourselves in the world better and can also excite us and inspire us and – as I believe – really change our lives,” he says, “it was definitely a dream.” But it was also a position in the rapidly evolving tech industry, and as Google, social media and eventually AI changed the digital world, the company suffered and was eventually sold. This change resulted in Kelly and his entire team being laid off.

“To see all of that go away, how do I make sense of that?” he says, adding that time has given him perspective, which he’s able to share with young people who express their own interest in building a content career online. “A lot of people, due to our digital environment, really are interested in entrepreneurial content creation and all of its adjacencies,” he says. “I'm able to tell them that tech and media is very different in 2026, but the core skills you need are still the same, which is just tenacity and authenticity. I feel very proud to be able to share my lived experience that way.”

In the moment, though, the transition was painful, and Kelly struggled to find a way forward in his work. “I was a bit paralyzed by the fact that I didn't know what I wanted to do,” he says. “I remember after the layoff, I said to myself two things. I'm not writing about words anymore – Mashed Radish is over. And I'm not going into teaching, because it doesn't pay enough and it's too difficult. I wandered in an unemployed wilderness for a while and really struggled to find my purpose.”

He applied for jobs across his wide skill set, from tech content marketing to communications, but lacked a passion for this work. He reached out to his network and set up coffee chats with some people, one of which led to a senior consultant role with Boldsquare. And though it was a very good job by most standards, Kelly continued to grapple with his purpose in the position.

Kelly kept at the work at Boldsquare and started to find success, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was mismatched for the role. Then one morning, he realized what was wrong.

“I woke up one day, it was late September, and I just knew that this is not what I wanted to be doing with my life,” he says. “I felt again, maybe really for the first time, all that I had done at UC and CPS and with the autism center … it really took on a kind of new urgency for me, as a person who needs purpose-driven work, to be doing work that connects with people. And I think an urgency for our society, too.”

Seized with a feeling that education was facing dire challenges and in need of help from those who can provide it, he felt a return of the call to the classroom he’d first heard so many years prior. “I said, look, that thing I said about not teaching? That's kind of what I need to be doing. When you feel that alignment with who you are and what you're supposed to be doing, there is a special peace and energy that's happening there.”

Kelly renewed his teaching license and accepted a long-term substitute teaching position at a Catholic school on Cincinnati’s west side, teaching English to seventh and eighth grade students. “This is what I want to be doing. It's hard, but I feel a happiness being able to help students and help schools.”

Though he concedes there’s a lot more technology in classrooms than when he did his student teaching, Kelly still draws on the education he received during graduate studies. “So many of the core principles, core values and core theories of pedagogy still are effective. The ways of thinking and the ways of interacting with students and learners, that hasn't changed at all. I feel there was a real durability and longevity to my education [at UC].”

He’s even been in touch with individuals within UC’s CECH for guidance on how he might continue his education as he develops his career. And, at the moment, he’s seeking a more permanent classroom position within a school.

Kelly has also returned to Mashed Radish, creating daily posts on word origins he’s fascinated by. Currently, he finds meaning in researching and writing about the names of places in the news, such as Iran and Milan.

“For me personally, I can take a minute to think through the events of the day and the word or words that we use to talk about it. I'm also able to balance what's on everyone's minds,” he says. “I know that my interest in word origin certainly helps me in the classroom. And right now it helps me de-stress, to be honest. It's just a very idiosyncratic way of doing it.”

Featured image at top: John Kelly stands outside on a sunny day. Photo: provided