Remembering Why It Is We Do What We Do

March 15 • 9:45 AM

Sometimes, despite the nobility inherent in the call to teach, we need to be reminded why we chose to walk the path in the first place. That’s what poet Taylor Mali does through a mixture of poetry and storytelling. He is the poet laureate of the heart-breaking, hysterical, humbling, and inspirational moments that make up a teaching career.

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement. Articulate, accessible, passionate, and downright funny, Mali studied drama in Oxford with members of The Royal Shakespeare Company and puts those skills of presentation to work in all his performances. He was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and was the “Armani-clad villain” of Paul Devlin’s 1997 documentary film SlamNation. His poem “What Teachers Make” has been viewed over 4 million times on YouTube and was quoted by the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman in one of his commencement addresses.

Mali is vocal advocate of teachers and the nobility of teaching, having spent nine years in the classroom teaching everything from Englishand history to math and SAT test preparation.

He has performed and lectured for teachers all over the world and has a goal of creating 1,000 new teachers through “poetry, persuasion, and perseverance.”

He is working on his first inspirational book entitled What Teachers Make, a short, passionate defense of teachers drawing on his own experiences, both in the classroom and as a traveling poet.

He is the author of two books of poetry, The Last Time As We Are and What Learning Leaves, and four CDs of spoken word. He received a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2001 to develop “Teacher! Teacher!” a one-man show about poetry, teaching, and math which won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 U. S. Comedy Arts Festival.