Conventional wisdom says the odds are against him, but year after year Rafe Esquith creates a culture of excellence in fifth grade classes at a large, urban elementary school where all of the students qualify for free meals and most speak English as a second language. Esquith's dedication and his belief in his students' potential inspires them to arrive two hours early, leave two hours late, take up a musical instrument and, in the spring, put on a play by Shakespeare.

And what's most miraculous of all is that Esquith has been doing this since 1982, dedicating his energy and all his spare time to turning around youngsters' lives in a classroom at Hobart Elementary School in a Los Angeles neighborhood known for poverty, gangs and violence.

Esquith teaches by example. He writes, "I knew that if I wanted the kids to work hard, then I'd better be the hardest-working person they'd ever known. If I wanted them to be kind, I'd better be the kindest human being they've ever met."

These words are excerpted from the first of Esquith's three books, whose titles tell their own story about his approach to education: There Are No Shortcuts (2003), Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 (2007), and Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World (2009).

Esquith is best known for organizing the Hobart Shakespeareans, a troupe of fifth graders who have performed all over the country as well as at the Old Globe Theatre in London and before the Royal Shakespeare Company. "Our Shakespeare play takes a year of their lives," Esquith says, "a year where they give up television. But they're so happy doing it that they all think it's worth it."

Oh, and by the way, they also learn science, math, and philosophy. Esquith's classes consistently score in the top 10 percent on standardized tests, and he addresses issues of morality that few teachers take on. The class motto is "Be nice. Work hard."

There is a misconception that poor children do not care about school," Esquith says. "It's just not true. If you build it, they will come. We have a culture here with so many wonderful things for the students to do that they hate leaving this classroom."