Esquith, students inspire audience

Fifth-grade teacher and bestselling author Rafe Esquith teaches in a Los Angeles school in which most of the students come from lives of poverty. Many speak English as a second language. Few go on to graduate high school, let alone college. Yet Esquith's alumni include many successful people, including a lawyer who helped establish a foundation to support Esquith's efforts in the classroom.

"How can I break the cycle of failure?" Esquith asked the audience at the Wednesday General Session of the IRA Annual Convention in Atlanta. "If my kids don't read well, there is no hope. If our kids don't love to read, there is no hope. We took all of the basals and we tossed them. We take all the books that have been banned and we read them."

Not only do Esquith's students read, each year they become involved in producing a Shakespeare play set to rock music. This year's class is beginning a production of As You Like It, and some of his students performed Shakespeare scenes set to Del Shannon's "My Little Runaway," Sting's "Fields of Gold," and the Rolling Stones' "She's So Cold." Other students performed the music, with each song earning a standing ovation from the appreciative crowd. The students concluded with an entertaining compilation of phrases from Shakespeare's plays that remain in use today.

Esquith read from a letter that a former student had written for her college application about how her experience in his class had shaped her. "Putting together those plays taught me about humility and teamwork," she wrote. "Who thought one could learn so much by being in a play?"

"What I fear for these kids is not drugs or gangs," Esquith concluded. "What I fear for these kids is being ordinary." All who attended this rousing session left realizing that here were a teacher and students that were indeed extraordinary.