Classroom Creativity Helps Teacher Rise in Statewide Competition

Students in an advanced English class at Granada Hills High School hunched over their desks, peering intently at pennies. Some sniffed the one-cent pieces while others ran their hands over the etchings.

The 39 sophomores had been ordered by teacher Ali Maxwell Taylor to forget the pennies were pennies and draw as many inferences as they could about the civilization that used the metal coins.

“You’re going on an excavation trip,” Taylor told the group Monday. “You have found a penny but do not know it’s a penny.”

Taylor used the penny drill to reinforce a theme about what you can infer about people from objects they carry or use. It is just one example, students and administrators said, of the creative and energetic style used by Taylor, who was named this week as a semifinalist in the 1992 California Teacher of the Year competition.

“She gets us to think without letting us know that we’re thinking,” Amy Amper, 14, of Mission Hills said. “She makes it enjoyable.”

Administrators echoed the praise.

“We think she’s a special teacher because of her enthusiasm and her immense intellectual ability,” Granada Hills Principal Anne L. Falotico said.

Taylor, 44, a third-generation teacher, was among eight semifinalists selected by a 12-member committee appointed by Bill Honig, state superintendent of instruction. The committee considered 57 nominations made by county offices of education.

The field will be narrowed to four finalists after classroom visits in the next week, and the winner will be announced in November after extensive interviews with Honig. The winner will then take part in a national competition.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable,” Taylor said of her semifinalist status. “I’ve received plaques and applause, but I’ve never received an award like this.” When she was growing up in Hopkinsville, Ky., though, Taylor dreamed of becoming an actress.

Her grandmother, a teacher for 49 years, and her mother, a teacher for 43 years, persuaded Taylor to get a teaching degree in case acting did not work out. Taylor and her two brothers ultimately followed the family lead.

“I decided I would rather teach and have loved it ever since,” she said.

Taylor has developed her teaching methods over the past 20 years, taking assignments that have ranged from teaching in a Kentucky program for pregnant high school girls to leading a junior high drama club in Tennessee.

During her five years at Granada Hills High, Taylor has taught English and developed a public speaking class and a speech team that last year picked up 100 trophies.

Taylor said her greatest honor so far has been earning the semifinalist status. She said that if she wins, she would like to change people’s negative perceptions of teachers.

“They could see how dedicated teachers are,” she said, “and that we’re trying to get the best from their children. Then they would have higher respect and not wonder about the worth of teachers.”