‘Teachers Make’ A Difference, What About You?

Teaching, once a revered profession, has of late been much maligned. Teachers are accused of laziness and greed. They’re blamed for low test scores, and a general decline in the nation’s educational standing. Most people believe their work day is short and their vacations are long. But teachers also have their defenders — perhaps none so passionate as Taylor Mali.

Mali was once a full time teacher. Now he calls himself a teacher-poet, and he’s just released a new book, What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World, that chronicles his journey from educator to advocate. Mali says that journey began with an unfortunate encounter with an obnoxious lawyer at a party.

“He insulted me and the entire teaching profession by saying that anyone who wanted to be a teacher essentially didn’t have the intellectual capacity to be allowed to be one,” Mali recalls. “And then he probably did ask me what my annual salary was and I probably looked down at my shoes and said $27,500. And so, it was probably a week or two later that I wrote the comeuppance that I wish I had been witty enough to deliver that night.”