"There Are No Shortcuts."

A few years ago, I watched a documentary on PBS about a Los Angeles teacher, Mr. Rafe Esquith, who instills hard work and perseverance in his students to excel in their studies despite their poverty background.

I am really inspired by his example and hope to use some of his techniques to inspire daughter to achieve academic success when she is older. Here is an article on NPR about Mr. Rafe Esquith.

Inner-City Teacher Takes No Shortcuts to Success

He's won the American Teacher Award, been awarded the National Medal of Arts, and made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire.

And yet for 24 years, Rafe Esquith has continued to teach at Hobart Elementary, an inner-city school in Los Angeles, inspiring his fifth graders to excel far beyond the low expectations often placed on poor, immigrant children.

Every morning, Esquith's students arrive at school at 6:30 a.m., nearly two hours before the rest of the students, to work on mental math exercises. It's part of what he calls the "culture of excellence" in his classroom. Esquith expects a lot from his 10-year-olds, and he gets it. They volunteer to come in early, work through recess and stay late until 5 p.m. And they come to class during vacations and holidays.

Their hard work shows up in test scores: They consistently score in the top 5 percent to 10 percent of the country.

The second-largest elementary school in the nation, Hobart has more than 2,000 students; 90 percent live below the poverty level. All are from immigrant families, primarily Hispanic and Asian. Though none speaks English as a first language, Esquith's students read literature far above their fifth-grade level -- Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird.'

Read more here.