Rafe Esquith
5th grade teacher at Hobart Elementary, Los Angeles
Rafe Esquith is an award winning fifth grade teacher at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles, where few students speak English and all qualify for free breakfast and lunch. Despite these obstacles, his students rank in the top five to ten percent of the country on standardized tests and their annual performances of unabridged plays by Shakespeare are legendary. On The Tavis Smiley Show, Esquith says he fails all the time, but keeps moving forward. In his new book, Real Talk for Real Teachers, Esquith discusses how he lost and then recovered his focus on The Hobart Shakespeareans' core objectives.