Shakespeareans of Hobart Boulevard *

Tonight on the PBS program P.O.V., much of the country will discover another teacher who has the magic. Rafe Esquith teaches Shakespeare to fifth graders at Hobart Boulevard Elementary in Koreatown. He's so good at it that Ian McKellen—who's had a few turns as Hamlet, Macbeth and Iago—has stopped by to cheer him on. A 12-year-old girl who plays Ophelia has already performed in Hawaii, Washington, D.C., South Dakota and Ashland, Oregon, thanks in part to the Hobart Shakespearean Foundation. There are stories today in the New York Times and the L.A. Times—the latter is longer, but I'll quote from Anita Gates' NYT piece:

The 49-year-old teacher, Rafe Esquith, is a genius and saint. The American education system would do well to imitate him. These children's lives have been changed by their year with this man. And it is not all about Elizabethan drama.

Mr. Esquith's pupils play guitar. They name the six states that border Idaho. They discuss whether Huckleberry Finn would be doing the right thing to turn in his friend Jim, a runaway slave. They visit the Lincoln Memorial on a class trip.

Their classroom world operates like the real one: with money. In this case the currency is play money, in which they are paid salaries. It costs more to sit at the front of the class than in the back. Not doing your homework brings a $50 fine. At Christmas, Mr. Esquith gives them real Barnes & Noble gift certificates.

But it is the yearlong study of a single Shakespearean play that symbolizes Mr. Esquith's methods and his success.

Thank you, Mr. Esquith. In Los Angeles, the first part of Mel Stuart's documentary doesn't air until Friday at 9:30 p.m. on KCET.

* Got there first: Last week at National Review Online, Catherine Seipp (she uses the longer first name there) did a From the Left Coast column on Esquith: "'Some children should be left behind,' he likes to say. On the other hand, he can see potential in children that other teachers don’t. In the P.O.V. film, one of Esquith’s young Shakespearean stars remembers the fourth-grade teacher who would dismiss questions with an irritated 'you weren’t listening.' 'And I was listening,' the boy tells the camera in frustration. 'I just didn’t get it. Rafe will explain it to me 500 times if he has to.'" Seipp notes that Esquith wrote a book about his career, There Are No Shortcuts.