Man on Fire

On my drive home two days ago, I heard a segment on NPR Radio about Rafe Esquith, a local fifth grade teacher in a low-income school district. He recently wrote a book called Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire about his efforts to motivate his students and prepare them for real life. The title comes from an actual incident when he was so focused on helping a student with her chemistry experiment that he didn't realize he had set his own hair on fire until the kids started screaming. He feels that incident embodies a crucial principle for teachers: care so much about helping the kids that you forget everything else.

Among other things, Esquith has his students apply for “jobs,” for which they receive some sort of wage. They can also earn overtime pay through extracurricular activities. The students must use their earnings to pay rent on their desks each month, and the desks in the front of the room cost more because they’re in a “better neighborhood.” To teach the principle of ownership vs. renting, the teacher allows children who save their money to buy their desks and not have to pay rent anymore. Some of the more entrepreneurial children buy other kids’ desks and charge them rent.

Another interesting part of the segment was a recording of Esquith giving his students a word problem. Try it yourself and see if you know as much about math (and your government) as his fifth-graders: Take the number of Supreme Court justices, add the number of members of the U.S. Senate, add 1, divide the sum in half, divide by 11. Esquith told the students to show their answer by holding up the right number of fingers, and within moments he identified a girl who was showing him the correct answer of five. Is that what you got?