What teachers make.

Taylor Mali’s “What Teachers Make” turns the question of what a teacher earns into an answer about what a teacher gives. I first shared it in 2010. I still find it inspiring.

The performance.

Three minutes on stage at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, recorded in November 2005 and later published by TED. At a dinner party, a lawyer mocks teaching and asks Mali, a teacher, what he makes. Mali answers with what he makes his students do: work harder than they thought they could, question, write and read. The line that carries it: “You want to know what I make?”

It is a piece to hear, not to read about. So the full text is not here. It belongs with Mali.

Watch Taylor Mali perform What Teachers Make on TED, or read the poem on his own website.

More than a performance.

In 2010 I called Mali an extremely gifted speaker. What impressed me more was his commitment. In 2000 he set himself a goal: create 1,000 new teachers through “poetry, persuasion, perseverance, or passion”. When I wrote about him, he was halfway there. He reached 1,000 on 1 April 2012.

What still gets me is the purpose. A thousand teachers. That is bold: it takes guts to say a number like that out loud. And he pulled it off. On top of that, it is simply a good poem, and one you recognise.

Taylor Mali, What Teachers Make; performance at the Bowery Poetry Club, 12 November 2005, published by TED. The 1,000-teacher goal: Wikipedia. Based on my original post Creating excellent teachers. One at the time., 17 August 2010, rewritten in October 2026.