Rafe Esquith > Quotes

“Never compare one student's test score to another's. Always measure a child's progress against her past performance. There will always be a better reader, mathematician, or baseball player. Our goal is to help each student become as special as she can be as an individual--not to be more special than the kid sitting next to her.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“To quote the exceptional teacher Marva Collins, "I will is more important than IQ." It is wonderful to have a terrific mind, but it's been my experience that having outstanding intelligence is a very small part of the total package that leads to success and happiness. Discipline, hard work, perserverance, and generosity of spirit are, in the final analysis, far more important.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“I'd like to give every young teacher some good news. Teaching is a very easy job. Administrators will tell you what to do. You'll be given books and told chapters to assign the children. Veteran teachers will show you the correct way to fill out forms and have your classes line up.

And here's some more good news. If you do all of these things badly, they let you keep doing it. You can go home at three o'clock every day. You get about three months off a year. Teaching is a great gig.

However, if you care about what you're doing, it's one of the toughest jobs around.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“Most of us have participated in the trust exercise in which one person falls back and is caught by a peer. Even if the catch is made a hundred times in a row, the trust is broken forever if the friend lets you fall the next time as a joke. Even if he swears he is sorry and will never let you fall again, you can never fall back without a seed of doubt.”
― Rafe Esquith

“That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“There are so many charlatans in the world of education. They teach for a couple of years, come up with a few clever slogans, build their websites, and hit the lecture circuit. In this fast-food-society, simple solutions to complex problems are embraced far too often. We can do better. I hope that people who read this book realize that true excellence takes sacrifice, mistakes, and enormous amounts of effort. After all, there are no shortcuts.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“Most children, even very bright ones, need constant review and practice to truly own a concept in grammar, math or science. In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills, but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation.”
― Rafe Esquith, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World

“These days, many well-meaning school districts bring together teachers, coaches, curriculum supervisors, and a cast of thousands to determine what skills your child needs to be successful. Once these "standards" have been established, pacing plans are then drawn up to make sure that each particular skill is taught at the same rate and in the same way to all children. This is, of course, absurd. It gets even worse when one considers the very real fact that nothing of value is learned permanently by a child in a day or two.”
― Rafe Esquith, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World

“I found the role model to inspire me to handle such situations with more grace, maturity, and, most important of all, results...

I reread Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and I realized I had found my hero in Atticus Finch...

It hit me like a thunderbolt. You see, Atticus knows everything Huck knows. He knows society is racist. He recognizes the violence, hypocrisy, injustice, and ignorance of society. He knows he is going to lose.

But Atticus does not light out for the territory. He goes into the courtroom to fight the fight as best as he can, because it is what he believes in. He doesn't do it because of the law, or the rules, or what people will think. He has his own code, and he lives by it as well as he can.

I still cry when I think about this. My classroom is my courtroom. I am going to lose more than I win. There are many times when, despite my efforts, I will lose children to poverty, ignorance, and, most tragically, a society that embraces mediocrity...

I've made plenty of mistakes since rediscovering Atticus, but I've always been able to hold my head up to my students. Atticus showed me the way.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“Would you rather have your child in a room with the best equipment in the world with an average teacher or an empty room with Socrates?”
― Rafe Esquith

“I didn't realize that many people, who may be good people, feel that working in schools is just a job and not a holy mission.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“Children are born with varying levels of talent and intelligence, but possessing natural smarts and skills is no guarantee of success. It takes more than that: it takes work on the part of parents and teachers to cultivate these qualities, to instill in children the drive and character necessary to translate their natural gifts into extraordinary results.”
― Rafe Esquith, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World

“A child who learns that the past has created the present and that the present will shape the future will be willing to explore other times beyond his own limited existence.”
― Rafe Esquith, Lighting Their Fires: How Parents and Teachers Can Raise Extraordinary Kids in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up,Shook-up World

“I've learned the best reason to take children on the road: children learn and understand how to behave by being exposed to new situations and watching others...As a teacher of children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, I came to understand that my students would work harder for a better life if they saw the life they were working for.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“But to paraphrase Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind, ignorance and mediocrity are forever busy, and the forces of mediocrity aren't content with being mediocre; they'll do everything in their power to prevent even the humblest of teachers and children from accomplishing anything extraordinary. For good work shines a light on the failures of the mediocre, and that is a light which terrifies those who conspire to keep our nation's children, like themselves, ordinary.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“Early in To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem refuses to come down from the tree house and eat breakfast because his father won't play football for the Methodists. Atticus goes out to invite Jem in to eat, but Jem refuses. Atticus doesn't get into a long discussion. He has made his offer and quietly walks away when Jem stubbornly declares he will not come down. 'Suit yourself,' says Atticus simply. He can rest easy because he's done his job as a loving father, and if Jem decides to go hungry, that's his choice. The wise father knows when to walk away and leave well enough alone.

As a teacher , I wish I had realized this early in my career, but at least I know it now. Whether I deal with administrators, parents, teachers, or students, I have my answer.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“I thought to myself that if I could care so much about teaching that I didn’t even realize my hair was burning, I was moving in the right direction. From that moment, I resolved to always teach like my hair was on fire.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“The larger problem here is that many teachers are so desperate to keep their classrooms in order that they will do anything to maintain it. This is understandable—an “End justifies the means” mentality is at the heart of many explanations of how children are handled these days. Given some of the practically impossible situations confronting teachers today, it seems reasonable. But let’s be honest. It might be explicable. It might be effective. But it is not good teaching. We can do better. I know this because I’ve been there. I’ve fallen into the same trap. The simple truth is that most classrooms today are managed by one thing and one thing only: fear.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“Unfortunately working hard doesn't necessarily make someone an effective teacher.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“if you become angry over little things, the big issues are never even addressed. As”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“With better vision, we sacrifice for students for whom that sacrifice will most likely pay off. I'm sorry to say this, but there are times when even superhuman effort will not save a child from his environment or himself. It's not the job of the teacher to save a child's soul; it is the teachers' job to provide an opportunity for the child to save his own soul.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“I teach my students that while rules are necessary, many of our greatest heroes became heroes by not following the rules. [...] Extraordinary people throughout history have done this, and if we want our children to reach such heights, they need to know the rules but see past a chart on the wall. There will be times when the chart is not there. More important, there will be times when the chart is wrong.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“Socrates was the best teacher and they killed him!”
― Rafe Esquith

“Everything has become too easy for our young people, and we make things worse by lying to them. We don't help them face reality. Teachers and schools lie to children and parents all the time.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“Self love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self neglect.”
― Rafe Esquith, Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: "No Retreat, No Surrender!"

“In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation.”
― Rafe Esquith

“End justifies the means”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

“Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today's students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers...Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.”
― Rafe Esquith, There Are No Shortcuts

“If I push a few of your buttons I'm probably doing my job as a teacher!”
― Rafe Esquith

“Our assessment of reading may begin with standardized test scores, but in the end we must measure a child’s reading ability by the amount of laughter exhaled and tears shed as the written word is devoured.”
― Rafe Esquith, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56