There are many talented educators who have earned accolades in fields other than education. This is true about Taylor McDowell Mali, a teacher who has also earned fame as a slam poet, humorist, and voice over artist.
Taylor was born on March 28, 1964. His father was H. Allen Mali, a manufacturer of pool table coverings, and his mother was Jane L. Mali, a recipient of an American Book Award. In 1983, Taylor graduated form the Collegiate School, a private boys’ school. After his high school graduation, he enrolled in Bowdoin College, earning his bachelor’s degree in English in 1987 and his master’s degree in English and creative writing from Kansas State University in 1993.
Taylor Mali spent nine years teaching English, history, and math, including stints at Browning School, a boys’ school on the Upper East Side of New York City, and Cape Cod Academy, a K-12 private school on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He now lectures and conducts workshops for teachers and students all over the world. In 2001, Taylor Mali used a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to develop the one-man show “Teacher! Teacher!” This show explores the combination of poetry, teaching, and math. He is a strong advocate for the teaching profession, and in 2000, he set out to create 1,000 new teachers through “poetry, persuasion, perseverance, or passion.” He finally achieved that goal on April 1, 2012.
Taylor has earned numerous accolades as a slam poetry artist. A slam poetry contest is a competition at which poets read or recite original work. These performances are then judged on a numeric scale by previously selected members of the audience. As a slam poetry performer, Taylor has been a member of seven National Poetry Slam teams, six of which appeared on the finals stage, and four of which won the competition.
Additionally, Taylor is the author of What Learning Leaves and the Last Time as We Are. He has recorded four CD’s. He is also included in various anthologies, and is perhaps best known for the poem “What Teachers Make.” The popular poem became the basis of a book of essays entitled What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World, published in 2012. He appeared in Taylor Mali & Friends Live at the Bowery Poetry Club and the documentaries “SlamNation” (1997) and “Slam Planet” (2006). He was also in the HBO production Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, which won a coveted Peabody Award in 2003.
