{"id":498604,"date":"2010-04-01T12:12:20","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T16:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/2010\/04\/01\/2647793\/in-the-classroom-he-stood-and.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-04-01T12:12:20","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T16:12:20","slug":"editorial-in-the-classroom-he-stood-and-delivered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/498604","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: In the classroom, he stood and delivered"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t<\/a>
\n\t
\n\tJaime Escalante<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.” <\/p>\n

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.” <\/p>\n

Behind this was something very traditional, captured in a sign underneath his classroom clock:<\/p>\n

“DETERMINATION + HARD WORK + DISCIPLINE = THE WAY TO SUCCESS.” <\/p>\n

Equally traditional was his view that successful teaching is about “identifying and implementing techniques that have withstood the acid test of classroom performance.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In Sacramento, Escalante was just getting started when he retired in 1998. <\/p>\n

After a long battle with cancer, Escalante died Tuesday in Roseville, where he was staying with his son. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}