Taylor Mali - What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World

WHAT
TEACHERS
MAKE

WHAT
TEACHERS
MAKE

IN PRAISE OF
THE GREATEST JOB
IN THE WORLD

Taylor Mali

G. P. PUTNAMS SONS
New York

P UTNAM

G. P. PUTNAMS SONS
Publishers since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright 2012 by Taylor Mali
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,
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Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mali, Taylor.
What teachers make : in praise of the greatest job in the world / Taylor Mali.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-57736-3
1. TeachersConduct of life. 2. Teaching. 3. Motivation in education. I. Mali, Taylor.
What teachers make. II. Title.
LB1775. M4245 2012 2011050661
371.1dc23

Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Book design by Meighan Cavanaugh

All names and identifying characteristics have been changed
to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers
and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author
assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.
Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

Dedicated to Joe DAngelo

Most of the fires I have lit came from your matches.

W HAT T EACHERS M AKE, OR
O BJECTION O VERRULED, OR
I F T HINGS D ONT W ORK O UT ,
Y OU C AN A LWAYS G O TO L AW S CHOOL

He says the problem with teachers is,
Whats a kid going to learn from someone
who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that its true
what they say about teachers: Those who can, do; those who cant, teach.
I decide to bite my tongueinstead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that its also true what they say about lawyers.
Because were eating, after all, and this is a polite conversation.

I mean, youre a teacher, Taylor.
Be honest. What do you make?

And I wish he hadnt done that
asked me to be honest
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your
very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why wont I let you go to the bathroom?
Because youre bored.
And you dont really have to go to the bathroom, do you?

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I havent called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
To the biggest bully in the grade, he said, Leave the kid alone.
I still cry sometimes, dont you? Its no big deal.
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write,
and then I make them read.
I make them spell
definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful,
definitely beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math,

and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this
then you follow this,
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this.

Here, let me break it down for you,
so you know what I say is true:
Teachers? Teachers make a difference!
Now what about you?

T his book exists because of a poem.

In 1997 I went to a New Years Eve party where an arrogant young lawyer insulted me and the entire teaching profession. Teachers are so overworked and disrespected, he reasoned, that anyone who would choose to become a teacher today must be of questionable intelligence and therefore shouldnt really be allowed to teach in the first place. It was like something a mean-spirited Groucho Marx would say: anyone dumb enough to want to be a teacher shouldnt be allowed to be one. For the lawyer, it really came down to how poorly compensated teachers areno intelligent person would take a job that paid less than what he was making as a lawyer. At the party that night I was so furious inside that I couldnt come up with a clever comeback, so I bit my tongue and laughed politely. But the next day, January 1, 1998, I wrote a poem that was the forceful response I wish I had delivered that night. The poem was called What Teachers Make.

What Teachers Make wasnt published in a book until three years later, but I did post it immediately on my website, which like many websites back then was brand-new and had a lot of pages that said either Under Construction or Coming Soon! And shortly after I posted the poem, I started to get a lot of e-mails about it.

What Teachers Make struck a nerve; it is about defending teachers and why we teach, and our anger at being judged by the size of our paycheck instead of by the difference we make. The poem speaks to people, teachers and non-teachers alike. Unbeknownst to me, it was copied and pasted and e-mailed around the world, sometimes without my name attached to it, forwarded by friends with apologetic disclaimers about how they dont normally forward things, but you must read this!

The poem was excerpted by famous people giving speeches and delivering commencement addresses. Newspaper columnists wrote about the poem and quoted from it. Seattle Public Radio did a story about it. Other versions of the poem were written, either to clean up my languageI was angry when I wrote it, and my outrage certainly influenced my choice of wordsor to make it fit other professions. Eventually someone posted a video on YouTube of me performing the poem live, and thats when it really took off. Millions of people have now watched and listened to the poem. It seems I was lucky enough to capture in words what many people have thought but never quite been able to say.