I first saw this story about Jaime Escalante in a blog post at Why Homeschool. I have never watched the movie Stand and Deliver, or read the book Escalante: The Best Teacher in the World, but the story of this math teacher was intriguing. According to this article and others written about him, he appeared to be a passionate, hardworking teacher.
Jaime Escalante was born in La Paz, Bolivia. Both of his parents were teachers. When he left Bolivia for the U.S. in the 1960's, he had been an educator for nine years. However, along with moving to a new country he had to start at the bottom, mopping floors, doing odd jobs, and teaching himself English so he could earn another degree in order to resume teaching.
After a rough beginning in America, he became well-known for his hard-won success in teaching mathematics to mostly poor Hispanic students at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, California. He labored tirelessly to get them to live up to their potential and saw great success with his students that got him noticed. He left Garfield High in 1991 to teach at another high school in Sacramento. Apparently, Escalante made a few enemies because of his unorthodox teaching practices (considered as "showy" by some) and his lobbying against bilingual education in schools.
Read more at Reason.com, The Futures Channel, and watch the video Jame Escalante on Being a Teacher. The movie may inspire people and give warm, fuzzy feelings - as a lot of movies have done (I remember going to see Top Gun and wanting to rush out and join the armed services immediately after). However, when Jaime Escalante himself speaks of his teaching successes, he makes it clear that his success was due to his hard work and teaching methods. In other words, his success wasn't just due to some vague stroke of luck brought on by a positive attitude and warm feelings.
(H/T Why Homeschool)
