Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World by Rafe Esquith
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(Hardcover)
- Pub. Date: August 2009
- 208pp
- Sales Rank: 19,965
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2009
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
- Format: Hardcover, 208pp
- Sales Rank: 19,965
- ISBN-13: 9780670021086
- ISBN: 0670021083
Synopsis
One of America's most celebrated educators teaches parents how to create extraordinary children—in the classroom and beyond
In his bestselling book, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, readers were introduced to Rafe Esquith and his extraordinary students in Hobart Elementary School's Room 56. Using his amazing and inspiring classroom techniques, Esquith has helped thousands of children learn to maximize their potential. In Lighting Their Fires, Esquith shows that children aren't born extraordinary; they become that way as a result of parents and teachers who instill values that serve them not just in school, but for the rest of their lives. Framed by a class trip to a major league baseball game, Lighting Their Fires moves inning by inning through concepts that help children build character and develop enriching lives. Whether he is highlighting the importance of time management or offering a step-by-step discussion of how children can become good decision makers, Esquith shows how parents can equip their kids with all the tools they need to find success and have fun in the process. Using examples from classic films and great books, he stresses the value of sacrifice, the importance of staying true to oneself, and the danger that television can pose to growing young minds. Lighting Their Fires is that rarest of education books: one that explains not just how to make our children great students, but how to make them thoughtful and honorable people.
Publishers Weekly
In his follow-up to Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, elementary school teacher Esquith focuses on financially disadvantaged but scholastically ambitious fifth-graders from Hobart Elementary School, located in the middle of a critically poor Los Angeles neighborhood. Directed primarily at parents, educators and administrators, this volume offers anecdotes and suggestions for inspiring and encouraging each child to live up to his or her tremendous promise. Framed by the story of a Dodgers baseball game to which he brings a small group of students, Esquith notes the values of his students in contrast to many of the adult ticket-holders: punctuality, focus, confidence, selflessness, humility, and others. He then probes the meaning of each value, like the way being on time reflects a belief in control over one's destiny, as well as a sense of responsibility. Celebrating his young students' everyday accomplishments, Esquith outlines the struggles and stakes that face them all, while making teaching (and learning) look easy.
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Biography
Rafe Esquith has taught at Hobart Elementary School for twenty-two years. His many other honors include the American Teacher Award, Parents magazine's As You Grow Award, Oprah Winfrey's Use Your Life Award, and the Compassion in Action Award from the Dalai Lama.
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
"Forget it! Another home run for Rafe Esquith and the Hobart Shakespeareans!"by CStromberger
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September 09, 2009: That's how the great Dodgers announcer Vin Scully might call the release of this book, Rafe Esquith's third volume of insights into teaching and parenting.
The living legend Vin Scully comes to mind for two reasons: first, Esquith's new book tells the story of a night at Dodgers game with five of his students, where they go to further their education about America's pastime; second, because Vinnie's love for the game, his passion for excellence, his dedication to his craft, and his gift for making work and play become one are all qualities Rafe Esquith works daily to instill in his inner-city Los Angeles fifth graders.Like thousands of others of teachers over the years, I've been welcomed as a visitor into Room 56 at Hobart Elementary, and it's a place where you always feel better when you leave than you did coming in. Why? You come away with a sense of hope for the future, I suppose. This book is the same way -- even dipping into various chapters in the bookstore when I first saw it, I felt, as a parent and teacher, encouraged, inspired, cheered on. For decades, as a teacher hungry for wisdom and mentorship, I have perused the Education section of bookstores. Over time I have obtained a shelf-full of very good books on progressive education and some gripping first-person stories. I find them all interesting and inspiring. But this book may be the first one I'll come back to and re-read in times of trouble. It is a truth-telling "Day in the Life" snapshot of a journey that is ongoing, a journey that is difficult, fun, painful, joyous, revelatory, numbing, all of those things, and also very, very important. Esquith, a veteran of a quarter of a century at Hobart Elementary, happily and humbly admits that his teaching becomes better every year, thanks to his students. So does his writing about his teaching. I look forward to his fourth book a few years from now!
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