Rafe Esquith
Rafe Esquith is an American teacher at Hobart Elementary School, the second largest elementry school in the United States, located in Los Angeles, California. A graduate of UCLA, Esquith began teaching in 1981. His teaching honors include the 1992 Disney National Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, a Sigma Beta Delta Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University, Oprah Winfreys $100,000 Use Your Life Award, Parents Magazines As You Grow Award, National Medal of Arts, and was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.
Esquith's fifth grades students start class at 6:30am each morning, two hours before the rest of the school's students. Most of his students come from imigrant Central American and Korean families and are learning English as a second language. They volunteer to come early, work through recess and stay late until 5 p.m. And they come to class during vacations and holidays.
Esquith's students consistently score in the top 5 percent to 10 percent of the country in standardized tests.
Each year the Hobart Shakespeareans, as Esquiths students are known, perform one of the Shakespear's plays. They have opened for the Royal Shakespeare Company, been hired by Sir Peter Hall to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles and appeared at the Globe Theater in London.