Jaime Escalante
High school math teacher Jaime Escalante, a Bolivian immigrant, was a maverick in some ways in his approach to teaching – and very traditional in others. For both, he was criticized.
He taught at high-poverty Garfield High School in Los Angeles from 1974 to 1991, building a first-class math program with high rates of student success on the Advanced Placement calculus exam. In a “second act” in his 60s, Escalante taught from 1992 to 1998 at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento.
He was absolutely, resolutely opposed to what he considered insidious prejudice: That demanding excellence from low-income students somehow posed a threat to their self-esteem. Too many teachers, he said, “accept the very real disadvantages faced by poor minority students as excuses for their failures.” They rush to help students “accept their limitations.”
In contrast, Escalante held to a simple view: “When students are expected to work hard, they will usually rise to the occasion, devote themselves to the task and do the work.”
Behind this was something very traditional, captured in a sign underneath his classroom clock:
“DETERMINATION + HARD WORK + DISCIPLINE = THE WAY TO SUCCESS.”
Equally traditional was his view that successful teaching is about “identifying and implementing techniques that have withstood the acid test of classroom performance.”
Escalante said he had to laugh when people said his program depended on a teacher’s charismatic personality. “It just shows how far away we have drifted from the fundamentals of teaching,” he concluded.
Escalante’s success in Los Angeles didn’t happen overnight. Over more than a decade, he meticulously built a tremendous feeder program to prepare students for calculus, a fact overshadowed in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver.” No one-year miracles here.
In Sacramento, Escalante was just getting started when he retired in 1998.
After a long battle with cancer, Escalante died Tuesday in Roseville, where he was staying with his son.
He was a teacher unafraid to step beyond rigid rules and ingrained habits to figure out what works for kids – no dwelling on why things can’t be done. He was not alone in this, but he showed what is possible, with persistence and commitment, in even the toughest schools.