Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

This man is a one-of-a-kind teacher. He makes me want to be the best teacher I can be. Great incite into the heart of a real and caring professional.

"Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire" is a far cry from his earlier self-serving book, "There Are No Shortcuts". This time, Mr Esquith writes with a comfortable humility and spends less time dishing out former student letters and comments.

"TLYHF" is neatly divided up into sections (although numbered chapters and a table of contents would have really helped) and focuses on subjects individually. Within these sections, Mr Esquith details how he and his students go about accomplishing set tasks; he provides at length different ideas and tactics he uses in order to get students form point A to point B. I really enjoyed his classroom management techniques, such as the "six stages of morality" which I used with my classes with great success.

The downsides: he continues to speak of himself as a lone island trying to stand against a disparaging sea of public education and educators. He even went so far as to take an angry note written by a colleague, photo copy it, pass it out to students, and have them edit it for grammar and spelling mistakes. Honestly, how unprofessional is that? Especially for a teacher? What message are you sending your students here?

Secondly, I am overwhelmed by the amount of time he puts into his classroom. As teachers we already spend a good deal of time outside the classroom just preparing for what goes on inside...isn't it healthier to actually find a balance? Personally, I think it's an incredibly unhealthy borderline obsession. Teachers need to maintain their own lives and certainly the relationship with their families. Whilst he claims that his wife supports him wholeheartedly, what about his poor children?

Thirdly, there are boundaries that I find crossed too many times with students. Trips should be chaperoned by more than just the classroom teacher, students should be showing respect by referring to you by your last name not your firs, and parents should be the ones showing their young ones around to colleges. It feels that he is trying to hard to be a father to each student...what about being a father to his children and letting other parents parent their own?

It was difficult sometimes to get past these shortcomings, but I do recommend the book solely for its practical purposes. Though he teaches gifted students, there is something to be said for some of his classroom management techniques. There are also other good tidbits you can find to help teach other subjects. If you can just get past the rest of it...

I'll be honest, I haven't bought this book yet. As a Senior in College with loans and student teaching looming in the distance I just don't have the time to go buy this book and sit down and read it with the attention it deserves. But I want it so badly that it will be topping out my Christmas list before any of the new techno gadgets.

I saw it in the book store, and as I've seen a video in one of my classes about this teacher I picked it up. The title was interesting as well and I flipped it open to a random page to get a feel for it. I was hooked, and if my mom hadn't been in the store I would have spent the rest of my night standing over the display reading this book cover to cover. It doesn't matter if you're in the classroom yet or still working your way there, this is a must read!

My name is Lydia and I read it as part of an assignment for my teaching education classes. I loved this book. Esquith makes the classroom come alive in real life and on paper and his rebuke of traditional teaching is swift and precise. His students are different and think about learning differently because he teaches differently. While his all out style is not for every teacher you can encorporate his passion and energy into any grade being taught. My favorite part is at the end when he aknowledges that sometimes he does let the stresses and difficulties of teaching his kids get to him. Every time that happens he goes back to one student who he really made a difference with and that student helps him regain his passion. The lesson for me is that if you can truly help one child learn in your classroom then it will always be worth the effort of teaching.

I picked this book up because I work with 4th-6th graders at an after school center. Regardless of if you are a teacher or not - if you work with children you MUST read this book. The tips, tricks, and ideas alone are priceless. I really admire that Rafe is a teacher and not just an educational theorist/researcher.

He reminds us that even though our school systems are getting more and more bureaucratic, we can still (and we must, really) strive to teach our students. He fights against complacency and disillusionment with his honest portrayal of education.


READ THIS!