Word: esquith
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...chalkboard in large black letters: THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS!! He opens his classroom at 7 a.m.--an hour early--for optional math study. After regular classes end at 2:48 p.m., he offers 45 minutes of Shakespeare, rehearsing a single play all year. Afterward, still on his own time, Esquith coaches volleyball, teaches computer use and helps with homework. Saturday mornings he tutors 40 former pupils, in Grades 6 through 9, in more Shakespeare--along with Ibsen, Chekhov, algebra and SAT preparation. Saturday afternoons he rehearses music with his students. "Call me the 'Education Equalizer,'" Esquith says, noting that middle...
...politicians, burbling over how to educate the underclass, would do well to stop by Room 56 this week, as Rafe Esquith's fifth-grade class mounts its annual Shakespeare play. There are few costumes--mainly T shirts inscribed with an image of the Bard under the words WILL POWER. Most of Esquith's 29 pupils are classified as gifted or high achievers, but that hardly guarantees success in an environment where poverty and gangsterism are endemic. Some of his incoming students this year "didn't know two times three," he says. "Four of them couldn't write a sentence...
Sound like a grind? Listen to the peals of laughter bouncing off the classroom walls. Esquith's Shakespeare goes down like a strawberry milk shake, as textual analysis is interspersed with anecdotes ("Richard Burton once peed in his armor, and the tinkle made the other actors giggle!"). Students without speaking parts play music that would make old Will squirm: Aegeon's plea for a stay of execution is accompanied by the Beatles' Help!, and the pursuit of a portly servant is enlivened with Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls. An overhead video shows the screaming crowds in Godzilla as the actors...
...Esquith says he thinks people chose to spend their break doing demolition work because "it was cheap and you're helping people...
...Esquith says, the Baltimore group did spend some time vacationing, going to a concert and visiting Washington...