"What Teachers Make"

-Taylor Mali

the poem

Due to the nature of these poems it makes the most sense not to read them but instead to see them performed. So, I have attached to this blog a video in which the artist recites his poem.

Slam poetry is a modern form of performance poetry that occurs within a competitive poetry event, called a "slam", at which poets perform their own poems (or, in rare cases, those of others) that are "judged" on a numeric scale by randomly picked members of the audience. It can also consist of several poets performing without being judged.

I thoroughly enjoyed this poem and truly admire this form of art. Mali uses a very simplistic and repetitive language along with a very common almost musical rhyme scheme as his tools to show a passionate teacher and his response to ignorance. He varies his volume and pitch to delineate the immense amount of passion he has as a teacher. The plainness of his language helps to show his belief that teaching is more about passion and discipline than it is about actual intelligence. His less than subtle point is that making a difference is far more important than making money.