Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Rafe Esquith (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 25, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

From 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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About the Author

Rafe Esquith has taught at Hobart Elementary School for twenty-two years. He is the only teacher in history to receive the National Medal of Arts. He has also been made a Member of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth. 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. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Barbara Tong. Read CBS's news story on Rafe Esquith.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (August 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021083
• ASIN: B004LQ0HW0
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rafe Esquith has taught at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles for twenty-four years. He is the only teacher to have been awarded the president's National Medal of the Arts. His many other honors and awards include the American Teacher Award, Parents magazine As You Grow Award, Oprah Winfrey's Use Your Life Award TM, and People magazine's Heroes Among Us Award.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for educators and parents, a great read for the rest of ya September 7, 2009

By Clayton Stromberger

Format:Hardcover

This is a night at the ballgame you don't want to miss.

"Lighting Their Fires" is not a prescriptive, I've-got-the-answers book. Instead, it's a precious opportunity to spend some time at a baseball game with five really remarkable young people, as teacher Rafe Esquith was fortunate enough to do last year in Dodgers Stadium. If you don't learn something from these five kids while reading this book, then you are a Scrooge indeed and perhaps in need of a midnight visit from the Ghost of Education Future, pointing a gnarled finger towards quite a few children being "left behind" if we keep going the way we're headed.

Rafe Esquith is onto something here. "Lighting Their Fires," like "There Are No Shortcuts" and "Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire" before it, is a gentle but firm wakeup call, reminding us, in a phrase he used often in his previous books, "I think we can do even better."

Where we can do better, Esquith says, is in helping our children ("ours" as teachers or as parents) become extraordinary -- not in their brilliance or test scores, though those have their place, but in their ability to develop their own code of conduct and then live it in a way that benefits everyone around them, from family members to classmates to strangers to even, thank goodness, their bearded and vest-and-tie-wearing teacher.

What Rafe and his students have discovered over the past 24 years in Room 56 at Hobart Elementary, it seems to me, is a new entryway into the ancient wisdom that great education is all about making us better people, not better test-takers. The energy and commitment level that is unleashed in these kids when they discover the joy of being selfless is a remarkable thing to behold.... In some cases it qualifies as heroic, especially in the face of adversity that most of us have never imagined.

This is a great book because it tells the truth. Rafe is saying that our culture, the stuff our children absorb countless times each day, is making it harder, not easier, to raise and teach children to become good citizens, good friends, good people. As a parent and teacher, I have to agree. All the folks screaming at elected officials at "town hall" meetings could benefit from a few weeks in Rafe's class. It's a place where the American dream is a practical, living reality, earned with hard work, patience, and thousands of hours of practice. And it's a dream rooted in a fundamental decency and concern for others.

I've spent some precious time as a guest in Rafe's classroom, and had the privilege of briefly meeting the five children seen leaping for joy on the cover of "Lighting Their Fires." I watched them and the other Hobart Shakespeareans work math problems, play baseball, read aloud "Huckleberry Finn," and perform Shakespeare and rock and roll and rollicking dance numbers. More impressively, I also remember some of these same students, and others, quickly offering me bottled water every time I entered their classroom. And I marveled at the humility and patience they demonstrated as they quietly watched their classmates rehearse for hours on end, long after all the other Hobart students had gone home. They are the real thing.

Watching these children, I could only wish for the same experience for my children; not, I realize now (thanks to this book) the experience of the "getting to do all this great stuff," but the living experience of being a kid who has decided to think of others first and, through that generosity, chosen to aim for excellence. Alas, my two kids cannot be Hobart Shakespeareans, cannot have Rafe as their classroom teacher. But like all true teachers, he is ready to share what he has learned with anyone who will make the effort to listen. This book is just another way of doing that. So check it out, spend some time at Dodgers Stadium with Rafe and the students, and see what you find yourself thinking about as you drive home after the ballgame, late at night, pondering what really matters in this life and what you want people to say about you when you're gone.

I can promise you'll be thinking about more than the final score. Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone can benefit from this book October 7, 2009

By Diane M. Davidson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

When I first heard Rafe Esquith speaking on the radio, I drove straight to a bookstore and bought his first two books, TEACH LIKE YOUR HAIR'S ON FIRE and THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. As a former teacher, I can tell you that they are both excellent. When I saw Mr. Esquith had written a new book and, better yet, was coming to Denver, I had to attend. With his students performing Shakespeare (beautifully) and Mr. Esquith providing (superb) comments, I was not disappointed. The evening was phenomenal, and I highly recommend that readers and book lovers of all ages, not just teachers, try to get to one of his signings.
I just finished the book yesterday, and it was amazing. He teaches kids time management. (Is this taught anywhere else? It should be.) He teaches them life skills such as getting and staying organized. He gives them a love of learning, so that they do extra reading not just because it's assigned, but because the reading itself brings intrinsic rewards. And most importantly, he teaches them values such as generosity, honesty, and humility. The kids learn these traits and keep them for a lifetime.
(Although I am a Rockies fan, I didn't even mind that the book was set at a Dodgers game. Little humor there. Please don't write to me; I am a huge admirer of Joe Torre.)
The lessons Mr. Esquith imparts can work for all ages. We can all turn off the television and read more; we can all toss the video games and play a board game; we can all be more generous, honest, and loving, not just when someone is watching. I bought four copies of this book, and plan to buy more. I highly recommend it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Teachers and Parents: Read this! September 21, 2009

By Luke Reynolds

Format:Hardcover

Rafe Esquith's third book on working with and inspiring students is just as powerful as his first two. Vividly, Esquith captures the most important lessons teachers and parents can share with their students and children in ways that are tangible, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and always meaningful.

What initially strikes the reader about LIGHTING THEIR FIRES is that Rafe Esquith has no meticulous agenda he wants every parent or educator to prescriptively follow. Instead, Rafe offers keen insights on what matters most in the lives of children, and begins to offer tangible ways we might bring these lessons to life. His stories are precise and flesh out the lessons in moving ways. Furthermore, this educator's 30-plus year career lends credibility to his words, and also the ethos of longetivity. Rafe has the benefit of sharing how certain lessons impacted students from years ago, and then can fill us in on their current successes and endeavors.

The book moves nimbly from lesson to lesson, and readers will appreciate the clear, straight-forward prose style. My own copy is dog-eared like crazy, and I'm sure I'll return to many of these pages again and again as I continue to teach and parent.

Worth every cent!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Skip this book, better titled as: Hitting a Home Run: Teaching Techniques that Transcribe to Parenting, and choose his other... July 6, 2011

By Julee Rudolf VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

...older books instead.

Having just read Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire and loved it, and There Are No Shortcuts and liked it, I expected more from this book in support of its subtitle, Raising Extraordinary Children. Instead, it's more about Esquith's extraordinarily effective teaching methods than about parenting. He does provide some suggestions, like: have your children write thank you cards, have them help with meals, teach them to be honest and humble. But: Hitting a Home Run: Teaching Techniques that Transcribe to Parenting might have been a better title. He starts out with a brief explanation of what he is and does--a teacher of over 24 years at Hobart Elementary School in the LA School District where he typically teaches poor, ESL learner 5th graders. In spite of that fact, he is able to help his students achieve a level of academic excellence above and beyond what those who ascribe to the idea that impoverished kids whose primary language isn't English can't achieve at the same level as their richer, English as a first language peers.

Because of his love of the sport, he recounts a particularly negative experience he and a group of his students had while attending a Red Sox game as the backdrop of the book, a sort of metaphor for "concepts that help children build character and develop enriching lives." If you know anything about Esquith, you know that the trip was nothing like your typical take-me-out-to-the-ball-game one might expect for 10 and 11 year olds, more like a lesson about life. *Note: the rest of this paragraph contains spoilers.* They arrive on time (note from RE: teach your kids the importance of time) to a nearly empty section and his students behave well, as expected.... His charges must pay particularly close attention because they've learned to take stats and will do so during the entire 9 inning game lasting late into the night. Soon a group of adults arrives with a small electronic-game toting child in tow (note from RE: don't let your kids have too much screen TV/computer time as it makes them less smart). Kid waves flag bought to replace broken game and unintentionally but repeatedly smacks one of Esquith's students with it. The adults' reaction to the teacher's request to ask the child to stop is no surprise; dad belts out a slew of curse words, showing everyone that those who show up late (I guess) are the same inconsiderates who will swear indiscriminately at youngsters. Later, he runs into a fellow teacher who apologizes for the man's bad behavior. And, of course, this man (everyone but Esquith and his students seem to think he must have some ulterior motive for his dedication) quizzes him about his showing up after hours with this group of kids, unwilling to accept that he does so for selfless reasons. The book proceeds with more about the game (the score, the inconconsiderate folks who defy the rules and throw around beach balls) contrasted with his kids' great behavior. Beyond the basics, there is less about parenting, more about teaching (especially about his word renown Hobart Shakespearean group and its fans). All I could think of as I read his recounting of the horrible experience they had at the baseball game was that it seemed odd: in all his years of chaperoning students to watch the Red Sox, he chose what was probably the worst of all instead of, say, providing a balanced view (for example, contrasting the lowlights of negative experience with the highlights of a positive one).

Although there is some helpful information in this book about building good character in and teaching children, I much preferred Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire because it is more specific. Also, the third time around I was less enthralled with his standard recipe for writing (though not his teaching accomplishments): talk about teaching techniques, explain what you've learned as a teacher, write about your students and your expectations for them, add some quotes from your favorite books and authors, provide a few positive and negative anecdotes about your current and former students and adults with whom you come in contact, than I was when it was still new to me. In summary, Esquith's latest, with its misleading title, similar style and content to his previous two books, and overwhelmingly negative baseball game metaphor, is better left unread. Recommended instead: There Are No Shortcuts and Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire. Also good: The Hobart Shakespeareans a film by Mel Stuart. Read more ›