After joining the history department this year to teach Ancient and Modern World History, Mr. Cory Taylor ’96 will pursue his career in education at Friends’ Central School.
After receiving his J.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Taylor started his career as a judicial clerk, eventually working his way into a position at a sizable law firm. After years of the constant grind that practicing law demanded, Mr. Taylor returned to his alma mater in a temporary capacity.
“This was really a one-year teaching internship,” Mr. Taylor said. “As I mentioned to my classes, I was an attorney looking to switch [professions], so this was essentially just for one year.”
Despite his plan to teach at Haverford only briefly, Mr. Taylor quickly engaged with his students and forged meaningful relationships.
“ to know the students was one of my favorite parts about teaching here. There are a lot of interesting people who go to school here, and it was a lot of fun getting to know some of them.”
Mr. Cory Taylor
“Getting to know the students was one of my favorite parts about teaching here. There are a lot of interesting people who go to school here, and it was a lot of fun getting to know some of them,” Mr. Taylor said.
New to teaching, Mr. Taylor was able to provide students with a unique teaching style. During the third and fourth quarters of the school year, Mr. Taylor introduced “Lateral Thinking Puzzles,” which were meant to be a fun, collaborative effort made by the class to solve one riddle each day at the end of class. The puzzles, while fun, served the greater purpose of making students think like historians by making them ask the right questions to get to the bottom of a problem. Over the course of the year, he also introduced various new types of assignments, assessments, and activities, stretching his students’ abilities to new heights.
Mr. Taylor has left a lasting impact on his students. He taught them to look at things from an inquisitive perspective and to ask the right questions.
“While there were of course assignments that we had to complete, there was also a certain liberty within many of those assignments,” Fourth Former Christopher Schwarting said. “I recall a project where we were asked to create our own DBQ prompt and response under any topic, and I chose to pursue something relating to progressive freedoms in Weimar Republic Germany. Exploring this niche was awesome for me to relate a personal subject of interest to my coursework, and I haven’t always had opportunities quite like it.”
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