[Net-Gold] SOME GOOD NEWS - About What Sounds Like an Amazing Teacher

[David P. Dillard]

Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 08:39:28 EDT
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Subject: [Net-Gold] SOME GOOD NEWS-about what sounds like an amazing
teacher .

> The Atticus Finch of Hobart Elementary 

> by

> Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted September 6, 2005. 

> In a stunning new documentary, a fifth-grade teacher at one of the nation's
> largest inner-city schools inspires his students to lead extraordinary
> lives, despite language barriers and poverty.                        Tools
> Documentaries today may be giving us what we hunger for. The film March of
> the Penguins, which reveals the birds' harsh and glorious Antarctic mating
> season, has become the second highest grossing documentary in history, behind
> only Fahrenheit 9/11. Another documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom, takes us inside a
> ballroom dancing competition for New York City's fifth graders. A third film,
> The Hobart Shakespeareans (premiering on PBS Tuesday, Sept. 6), made by
> filmmaker Mel Stuart, follows Rafe Esquith's fifth-grade class in inner-city Los
> Angeles as they learn to perform a full-text Hamlet by the end of their
> school year.
> Whether it's penguins or fifth graders, all these documentaries are about
> goodness, dedication and purpose, as well as respect and treating others well.
> There's something joyful and painfully touching when we see the life force
> in action with purpose.
> Rafe Esquith leads his fifth graders through an uncompromising curriculum
> of English, mathematics, geography and literature. His classroom mottos are
> "Be nice. Work hard," and "There are no shortcuts." Every student performs in a
> full-length Shakespeare play. Despite language barriers and poverty, many of
> these Hobart Shakespeareans move on to attend outstanding colleges.
> Esquith, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended the city's public schools,
> has taught fifth grade at Hobart Boulevard Elementary for over 20 years. "I
> don't want my students to be ordinary," he says. "I want them to be
> extraordinary because I know that they are. If a 10-year-old, who doesn't speak
> English at home, can step in front of you and do a scene from Shakespeare, then
> there is nothing that he cannot accomplish."
> TERRENCE MCNALLY: Rafe, what led you to teaching and to Hobart Elementary?
> RAFE ESQUITH: I became a teacher because my father taught me that a life
> without service is a wasted life. I found I had a knack for teaching, I taught
> at a middle-class school for two years. Great kids, but they didn't need me.
> I was challenged by a principal to come to Hobart School, where there are
> 2,400 children, and I realized that we were a perfect match. These were kids who
> want a way out, and after many years of teaching, I figured out a way to
> help them get out.
> Mel, what led you to this documentary?
> MEL STUART: Luck. That's a very important part of being a filmmaker. You
> have to be lucky. I was read in the paper that Rafe had won an award for
> teaching inner-city schoolchildren, nine and 10 years old, a curriculum that
> included performing Shakespeare. I'm a Shakespeare nut, have been since I was 13
> and saw Henry V with Olivier. So I called Rafe and asked him, "What play are
> you doing next year?" and he said, "Hamlet." I said, "Perfect, that's the one I
> want to do."
> I was initially attracted to the film because of the Hamlet hook, but when
> I watched it, I saw so much more. What did you know before you decided to do
> it, and what surprised you?
> MEL STUART: I went there planning to do Hamlet, but it turned out, they
> were playing baseball to learn to be American citizens, they were simulating a
> money economy in the classroom, they were reading the most incredible books.
> Rafe was guiding them through the great books of our literature.
> Fifth-graders.
> MEL STUART: Fifth-graders reading Catcher in the Rye and Malcolm X, or
> Huckleberry Finn. You see the effect it has on these kids. I only wish that my
> own children could have gone to Rafe's class. I made the film because I want
> the whole nation to know what Rafe can do with children that don't have the
> background and the money that other children in this country have.
> Rafe, in the film and in your book you mention a turning point, when you
> realized that you were a pretty good teacher and you were a teacher kids liked,
> but that you weren't making the difference you needed to make.
> RAFE ESQUITH: You're too kind. The truth is, I was failing, because the
> real measure of a teacher is not that the kids like him or that they do well at
> the tests at the end of the year. The real measure is where are these
> children five years from now, 10 years from now? What am I giving to these children
> that they'll be using for the rest of their lives?
> One night when I was really ready to give it up, my wife Barbara said,
> "Rafe you ought to re-read To Kill a Mockingbird." In Atticus Finch, I found the
> model I was looking for. Early in that book his children ask, "Are we gonna
> win?" Finch says no. But he doesn't run from the courtroom, he goes in and
> fights the fight anyway, because he believes strongly in Tom Robinson's
> innocence and he's going to speak the truth.
> My classroom is that courtroom. I feel all the time that I'm a very
> ordinary human being, but what separates good teachers from other teachers is good
> teachers don't give up. I tell the children not to give up. That means I can't
> give up either.
> Late in the documentary, you say, "I've won these awards, I've written this
> book, I've got this documentary, I could make more money doing something
> else, and I've been here 20 years now ... But for 20 years I've been telling
> them this is important. For me to walk away would make me a hypocrite."
> RAFE ESQUITH: Well, we always say, "No child left behind." I see a lot of
> teachers now who win an award or two, and they write their book and they get
> their website, and then they leave. Talk about no child left behind, they
> leave them all behind! I can't do that.
> What are some of the things you've come up with over the years? It's looks
> like a totally unique world inside your classroom.
> RAFE ESQUITH: You're right, we've created a different culture -- a culture
> that's different from the neighborhood in which these kids live, a culture
> different from society. We do it through character development. We have the
> children develop a code of behavior. Right now I'm not in the classroom, but
> I'll come back in an hour after I'm done talking to you, and the kids will be
> behaving perfectly because they don't behave for me. A lot of children try to
> please adults. I don't want them to please me, I'm a very small part of the
> story.
> The real heroes in this film are the children who have the courage to walk
> the path that I've laid out for them. That means a push for excellence. Our
> society doesn't value excellence, and I don't think excellence is a switch you
> can throw on at 3 p.m.: Hey, now it's Shakespeare time, now we're gonna be
> excellent! I want them to have a code of excellence in the way they approach
> their mathematics and their literature and the way they write and the way they
> speak in front of people, and the way they play baseball and travel on the
> road. It's not a dog-and-pony show, it's a way of life in Room 56.
> If I were a young teacher at your school, and I said, "My God, I walked
> through the neighborhood to get here this morning, I'm looking at what's around
> here, I'm looking at the way kids were out in the parking lot, how can I
> possibly do what you do?" How do you transform them? Why do your kids buy in?
> RAFE ESQUITH: First of all, lesson one, you are the role model, and you
> have to be the person you want the children to be. I want my kids to work hard,
> so I've got to be the hardest worker they've ever seen. It's not a question
> of preaching. I'm at that school at 6 in the morning, and right away, the kids
> go, "My God, this guy is really gonna work hard, so I have to work hard." I
> don't raise my voice to these kids, I don't humiliate these children. I'm a
> tough teacher, but if I want them to be nice to each other, I better be the
> nicest guy they ever met. So rule number one, be the person you want the
> children to be.
> Mel, I've heard you say that this is one of your favorite two or three
> projects of your career. That's saying a lot. Why?
> MEL STUART: Number one, it is the most cinéma vérité film I've ever made.
> Nothing was re-enacted. Everything was the only take. Rafe has that incredible
> quality which he's shy to admit, he can talk and walk at the same time. In
> our business it's very rare to find somebody who can go about doing what he's
> doing and still talk to you. He's doing his business, and the kids don't care
> and the class goes on, and you have a tremendous sense of reality. I never
> had to ask Rafe a question twice, the right answer always came out of his
> mouth. It's a very rare art, and Rafe has it. There were no re-takes.
> How did you choose to shoot it with Rafe occasionally speaking directly to
> camera?
> MEL STUART: No, he doesn't talk to camera. He talks to me, and that's a
> very important difference. I don't want him to talk to the camera, because first
> of all, it's a very hard thing to look at a camera and be yourself. Most of
> the time Rafe's walking this way and that around the classroom, and he has a
> thought and just hits me with it. If he hit the camera with it, it would look
> false. It's just the thoughts coming out of his head, but always on the
> nose.
> And we mustn't forget how important all the children are in this. There was
> a moment when I was interviewing the little boy who plays Hamlet, and I ask
> him, "What did you think of Huckleberry Finn? What kind of experience was
> that for you?" And he said, "Well, I thought the characters were interesting.
> They held a mirror up to nature." A 10-year-old Mexican kid just used that as a
> phrase. It blew me away! That was just a wonderful moment for me.
> A point you make even more in your book than in the documentary, Rafe, is
> the value of reading above all else. In teaching to change their lives,
> reading is something you find enormously important.
> RAFE ESQUITH: We have a Wall of Fame in my classroom. We have all the
> former students up who are in college now. I tell the children, there are a lot of
> different kinds of kids up there. There are jocks and there are artists and
> there are wild kids and there are shy kids. But the one thing they all have
> in common is they all read for pleasure and they all read well.
> One of the things that's wrong with the schools today is that in throwing
> basal readers at the children, and getting them to take all their tests and
> everything -- has anybody ever asked the children how they feel about the
> reading program? The kids hate it. They despise the reading program. The companies
> will say, "Oh, but test scores are going up." Their goals have to do with
> fluency and speed. My goals have to do with pleasure and passion. There's a
> scene in the film when the kids are reading Huck Finn, and they're absolutely in
> tears as Huck has to decide between heaven and hell, whether or not he's
> going to turn Jim in ....
> That is very powerful. Ten-year-olds together in a school classroom coming
> to a point in the book, and they cannot control their emotions.
> RAFE ESQUITH: That's what reading is supposed to be. We just finished Tom
> Sawyer and kids were hysterically laughing as Tom hoodwinks his friends into
> whitewashing the fence. My class's reading scores are so high because my kids
> love to read. They read all the time. And it's not because I'm such a good
> teacher, but I put great books in front of them. We forget Mark Twain's a great
> product. Children read him in the 1800s.
> Most kids won't get these books until years later, if at all. And these are
> not just fifth graders. Most of them are either Asian or Latino, and in
> their homes English is not the first language.
> RAFE ESQUITH: There's a key to that also. When they get thrown Steinbeck or
> Twain in the eighth or ninth grade, and are told, go home and read this,
> many children are going to home environments where it's just not conducive for
> reading. That's why we read these books together in the class. When people say
> to me, gosh Rafe, this takes a long time, I say well so what? I'm not in a
> hurry. When I say there are no shortcuts, that's for teachers too. We can't
> look for these simplistic solutions to complicated problems.
> You titled your book There are No Shortcuts. You have it spelled out on a
> banner in the front of your classroom. Where did that phrase come from and
> what does it mean to you, to your kids, and to the larger American society?
> RAFE ESQUITH: I'm a learner and I once took kids to the Hollywood Bowl to
> see the great cellist Lynn Harrell play, and Lynn loved my class so much he
> pulled his kids out of private school in Beverly Hills and put them at Hobart.
> There's an endorsement!
> RAFE ESQUITH: It was pretty funny to have these two white kids at Hobart.
> One of them wound up at Vassar and one of them wound up at Princeton, and
> they're still in touch with me all the time.
> We went backstage to visit Lynn and a young cellist looked up at Lynn
> Harrell, who's 6 foot 5, and the little kid said, "You know, I play the cello, Mr.
> Harrell, but it doesn't sound like that, how do you do it?" And Lynn just
> looked down and said, "Well, there are no shortcuts." I was in about my fifth
> or sixth year of teaching, and I said, "Boy, that encapsulates everything I'm
> trying to get across to these children."
> It's almost like a small tribe who share a certain set of iconic rules.
> RAFE ESQUITH: Being in Los Angeles and loving basketball, I always used to
> tell the children, there's nothing magic about Magic Johnson. This talented
> man worked for hundreds of thousands of hours in lonely gyms when there
> weren't people cheering him on to create that magic. There are no shortcuts.
> You openly tell the children you want a better life for them than the one
> their school, their neighborhoods or even their families offer. On field trips
> you put them up at hotels and feed them at restaurants. "There's a scene in
> the bus on the way back from Washington, when you address them about how they
> feel about going back to their normal lives. What's your thinking behind all
> this? Do you get flak for it?
> RAFE ESQUITH: I don't get flak for it; as a matter of fact I've got 60 kids
> showing up at 6:30 in the morning.
> I meant from other teachers or politically correct folk.
> RAFE ESQUITH: Sure, I teach with 125 teachers. Most of them are incredibly
> nice to me, and eight or 10 believe I'm the anti-Christ. And that's OK. The
> best teacher who ever lived was Socrates and they killed him.
> Exactly.
> RAFE ESQUITH: So if they're not shooting at me sometimes I'm probably not
> doing anything right. I do want a better life for these kids and surely, to
> live in a neighborhood where you hear gunfire at night is not the best thing to
> envision in your future. There are other children in America who don't have
> to go to bed with that. I'm just trying to level the playing field.
> "The Hobart Shakespeareans" premieres on PBS Tuesday, Sept. 6. Check your
> local listings for times.
> Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles
> (streaming at kpfk.org), where he interviews people he believes can help
> create 'a world that just might work.'


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