"The press gets it wrong. They try to make me this iconic teacher. It's not because I'm so brilliant; it's because I stuck with it." –Elementary school teacher Rafe Esquith on his success as a fifth-grade teacher.
In 1985, Rafe Esquith began teaching at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in Los Angeles, California.
Faced with a 92 percent poverty rate and 70 percent dropout rate, Esquith didn't have enough hours in the school day to teach everything his students needed to learn. So he started an after-school drama class.
Fast forward 25 years and Esquith is still teaching fifth graders in the same classroom at Hobart Elementary. But, as Huffington Post reports, many things have changed.
Esquith is now recognized internationally as a master teacher. With both the National Medal of Arts and Disney's American Teacher Award under his belt, he’s written three books about teaching, starred as the subject of a PBS documentary, and received accolades by everyone from the Dalai Lama to the Queen of England.
His after-school drama class evolved into a full-fledged theater company called the Hobart Shakespeareans. Students put on a new Shakespeare play every year, tour theater festivals, and have their own professional website.
Esquith’s fifth graders not only shine on stage, they also thrive academically, consistently scoring in the top 10 percent nationwide on standardized tests.
So what is the key to this elementary school teacher’s phenomenal success?
Esquith believes that excellence in teaching doesn’t spring from extraordinary talent, but from a less glamourous source: persistence.
He suggests that any teacher can achieve similar success with students if they stay in the profession as long as he has.
"I meet lots of great young teachers and they give up too easily," he said. "This is a long journey. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint."
Having spent nearly three decades as a dedicated classroom teacher, Esquith has become a living example of his own favorite saying: "There are no shortcuts."
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