Jaime Escalante

Jaime Escalante: Not Just Teaching,

Changing Lives

Jaime Escalante died at the age of 79, March 31, 2010. The Los Angeles Times printed an obituary that reminded people of the adverse conditions Escalante experienced in his teaching career, especially in his years teaching in Los Angeles (Woo, 2010). Most of the obituaries that told of Escalante’s achievements mentioned the fact that a movie, Stand and Deliver, (1988) had been made to portray Escalante as the dedicated and dynamic individual that he was for almost his whole lifetime. Edward James Olmos, the actor who played Escalante in Stand and Deliver, said, “Jaime didn’t just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives” (Woo, 2010).

Jaime Escalante achieved fame through establishing one of the most successful Advanced Placement programs in an unusually tough subject matter, calculus, in a high school filled with disinterested, discouraged, and disadvantaged students. Escalante in his own life had mastered multiple languages, overcame great adversity, worked hard humbling jobs when he first moved to the United States and learned to code-switch so effectively he could confront administrators and government testing officials. Escalante shared knowledge of the struggles. He taught his students strategies to rise above the daily discouragements. Escalante led them to have confidence in their ability to succeed in life.

Escalante taught his students to have ‘ganas,’ a desire to succeed (Grimes, 2010). Books, Stand and Deliver, written and directed by Menendez, (1988) television specials, a PBS Futures program that was the most popular classroom program ever on PBS, articles, radio, public speaking engagements, honoree of teaching organizations, broadcasting awards, and his obituaries show that ganas drove Jaime Escalante. He constantly gave more than 100% to help young people set and reach high goals (Matthews, 2010).

Overcoming the limitations of severe poverty as one of several children raised by a single parent in Bolivia, Jaime let deprivations lead him to learn and creative efforts. His bright ideas and perseverance sparked success in school even though he was a prankster and often in trouble. He served in the army, became a physics professor, then emigrated to the United States. Even though he had learned English, Jaime Escalante found that his Bolivian teaching degrees would not allow him to teach in the United States.

To provide for his family and have money for the courses he had to take to qualify for teaching in the United States, Escalante worked multiple jobs. He worked as a janitor, busboy, cook, electronics worker, foreman, supervisor, and technological problem solver while attending the required set of college classes to earn a teaching degree. Jaime Escalante knew and lived the ganas he sought to encourage in students (Puente, 2010).

In one PBS Futures episode, Jaime Escalante invited a young movie director as a guest to present information from movie-making connected to math. The director, James Cameron, had just completed the most detailed movie drama filmed in and underwater, The Abyss. In seven more years, Cameron would become a director of worldwide fame for another water movie, The Titanic. Cameron had studied and worked to master aspects of working with water in film. His skills included a comprehensive understanding of the concepts of volume.

Escalante presented Cameron to students as an expert movie director and lifelong learner. Students heard Cameron reinforce Escalante’s ideas for having a strong knowledge base, goals, and ganas. Escalante constantly affirmed anyone can have ganas and that people would need ganas in life choices, relationships, any simple job, or a long trek in a career field.

Escalante chose to work with students from impoverished backgrounds. Jaime Escalante believed all students can be top students if they are encouraged, taught with passionate interaction, held to high expectations, given personal regard, and if they will work hard. With his active and interactive teaching methods, students with little English could excel in math. If they worked hard in extra study sessions to build their English skills, they could excel in every other discipline. Team spirit, teachers and students working together to beat the big exams, this was Escalante’s method. If a student was struggling---that meant applying more hard work, extra study time, extra practice, extra tutoring. Escalante believed teaching students mattered far more than sorting students (Matthews, 2010).

Jobs with people involve frustrations on many different levels, and Escalante (2006) was open about the frustrations found in teaching, but he believed teachers should never give up. If teachers would model perseverance, a determination to overcome obstacles, and an ability to overcome adversity with hard work and innovations, teachers would inspire students to do their best. How could Escalante work for years with poorly prepared barrio students and still have a passion for his work?

Some people in 2022 might quip, “Well he didn’t have to teach online.” Since interacting with students in a classroom setting stood as a foundation for his teaching, Jaime Escalante would have encountered the same frustration with the often too fast and too ill-equipped move to online teaching, but for the sake of his students, he would make the switch and do the best job he could. How can anyone know this? One only needs to look at the major changes he coped with during his life and how consistently he worked to make positive connections with and for students.

He liked to teach, he liked and respected his students, and he always saw mistakes as an opportunity to learn and improve. Ultimately, he was proud to be a teacher, and he valued the opportunity to combine a love for his subject with a love for his students. He told National Public Radio, “You have to love the subject you teach, and you have to love the kids and make them see that they have a chance, opportunity in this country to become whatever they want to," (Sanchez, 2010).

LouAnne Johnson (2005) based her observations on perseverance from her teaching experience in high school classes where no one expected students to achieve anything, not the administrators, not the parents, not the other teachers, and not the students. Her situation was similar to Jaime Escalante’s. Johnson also had the ‘ganas’ to not give up on her students. After her years in the United States Marines, Johnson (1992) took the task of reaching her students as a personal challenge, a battle to be won. She could see that lives were at stake.

Johnson (2005) declared true teachers came in three flavors, “super, excellent, and good. Which flavor of teacher a person chooses to become depends on personal strengths, intimate relationships, professional goals, and individual priorities” (p. 3). Jaime Escalante fits into the category of super teacher based on his generous application of physical, mental, and emotional energy to his students. Many people have responsibilities that do not allow them the time to move into the super or even the excellent category for teaching. Good teachers still help students every day, but Johnson had no acceptable category for teachers’ efforts below good.

Investing the time and strength to be an excellent or good teacher will change lives in positive ways. The excellent and the good teachers have a purpose in common; they teach, according to Johnson, (2005) because they “believe it’s important” (p.5). Escalante had job offers that could have taken him out of the struggles of high school teaching and provided higher salaries, but he stayed where he felt he could contribute the most to changing lives.

The immediate application for any teacher who confronts the beliefs, values, practices, and theories of Jaime Escalante should spark an examination of why and how that person teaches. To have ‘ganas’ as a teacher, one must have at least as much desire to help students succeed as they would like to see their students have. Lifelong learning energizes individuals, and students can tell when their teacher is excited about learning.

‘Ganas’ causes one to see opportunities in hard work and to make choices to invest in young people even beyond the standard schedule and expectations. The belief in the power of education to open avenues of success for all students emerges from the words and actions of a teacher. Students read actions even more than words.

Escalante challenged teachers to examine their strategies in working with young people. Strategies rest on beliefs, theories, choices, and values. Navarrette (2010) claimed Jaime Escalante had a vision that led him to take his students far beyond where educators and educational systems take them at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Navarrette said Escalante provided a recipe to accompany the ‘ganas’ to help students.

Escalante knew the recipe for how to overcome those low expectations and teach students to succeed. It starts, he would say, with "ganas" –the desire of students to learn, coupled with the desire of teachers to teach. Mix in two parts hard work, a cup of sacrifice, and a dash of "anything is possible. "Oh, because you'll inevitably meet up with cynics and critics who try to derail you, to make themselves feel better about their own failings and to sustain their prejudices about who can learn and who can't, it doesn't hurt to put in a spoonful of attitude…

Before cancer, pneumonia, and a pulmonary arrest overcame Jaime Escalante’s strength and willpower, he had inspired generations of students and teachers. Jaime Escalante modeled ‘ganas.’ He received honorary degrees in humanities and education, making him Dr. Escalante. Jaime Escalante was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in 1999, but lived and will continue to live in the hearts and minds of people who believe in motivating students to do their best work.

In an obituary that reviewed and honored Jaime Escalante’s work as a teacher, Navarrette (2010) said,

"Here you have someone who arrived in the United States with very little money, who wasn't able to speak the language but went on to mop floors and work as a short-order cook by day. He learned English and earned math degrees, and a teaching credential by night, on his way to working for an electronics company. Then he followed his passion into teaching. You know people like that, or you did. Think Grandpa. Think Grandma. Take out "Bolivia, and fill in "Italy" or "Ireland." Those people don't want to hear your problems and why you think you can't do something. It's embarrassing. You whine about how hard you have it and how the odds are against you, and they just arrived from a place that makes your troubles look like a day at the beach."

Navarrette’s (2010) words to honor Jaime Escalante pointed to a teacher who loved teaching. Escalante was not afraid or resentful when confronted with hard work; he sacrificed because the love that led him to sacrifice also led students to trust in their ability to succeed. Jaime Escalante modeled all the best effort, setting goals, reaching goals, setting new goals, and helping others along the way. Escalante’s choices appeared in his actions, and anyone who cares to teach at a super, excellent, or good level (Johnson, 2005) could follow Escalante. Strategies born from a love for the job of teaching and interacting with students have broad and usually successful options for applications.

Strategy 1 for teachers: Appreciate the power of teaching.
Strategy 2: Value every moment. No one, not teacher nor students, knows how many moments they will have so everyone has a precious and unique opportunity with each day they are given.
Strategy 3: Keep expectations high, and provide methods and models to help students set and reach high goals.
Strategy 4: No matter who designs tests or sets the passing scores, make sure students know they can beat the test with work, knowledge, and practice.
Strategy 5: Help students to see that test scores are only one measure of success and that everyone has value before and beyond test scores because of their passions and dreams. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to pursue his dreams. Paul Allen dropped out of Washington State to start up Microsoft with friend, Bill Gates. Even though high scores and degrees are valued, students can still make major contributions to the world and

achieve high goals with knowledge, passion, vision, and positive relationships.

Jaime Escalante’s students achieved far more than anyone had expected them to do, and they overcame prejudices, including their own. For whatever discipline a person teaches, there are role models who have overcome great odds. Find those role models, and tell their stories to students. Remember Coles’s (1989) admonition to value stories as one of the most basic and powerful teaching components for individuals, groups, and cultures.

If the role model is still living or available via video, let that person speak directly to students. After each role model speaks or story is shared, encourage questions and discussion. Prompt and guide students to see if they can also achieve and reach goals. Lead students to list:

Ideas for keeping energized motivation to reach goals
Goals they could reach in the next month
Goals they could reach in the school year
Goals for study habits
Goals to promote healthy living
Goals for strengthening relationships
Goals for helping others

Take ideas generated in student discussions and create motivational sayings for the classroom. Display these tips, phrases, and strategies in attractive colorful banners, posters, or signs around the classroom. Say them aloud together each day in a repetitious order and develop a rhythm and cadence that students will enjoy and remember easily.

Evaluate the classroom routine. Days need enough structure for students to plan and feel secure, but enough variety to keep learning stimulating, intriguing, and relaxing. Even the most demanding activities can ultimately provide relaxation to students through enjoyable collaboration with classmates or purposeful individual activities. Adhere to school requirements as necessary but value the teachable moments and spontaneous interactions. Show enthusiasm and personal interest in students. Try to meet the unique needs of each class but have a pervasive style and atmosphere that causes all students to know they are in the presence of someone who believes in them, someone who will help them to succeed.

Build spirit in the classroom. Is there an opening routine, song, motto, or action that could start the day? Have students brainstorm possibilities and then make some choices. These can vary month by month or semester by semester and suit the age of the students.

Class spirit is also established by empowering students to use class time to work on their own and with classmates because community built from shared interests and helping one another can emerge in a classroom. Hidden talents often emerge when students share.

Having set locations for materials, information, and procedural options helps students feel that the classroom is an educational home base.

Is the classroom set up so that students know which materials are available?
Is the daily schedule clearly visible?
Do students know when they can go and work with other students?
Where can students see the homework assignments?
Is there a place where students can turn in assignments? Even late assignments?
How do students know what they can do if they arrive early or finish their class assignment early?

If students believe the classroom is welcoming, organized, and safe, they will flourish in attempts to learn as much as possible and strive to reach high goals (Wong and Wong, 2009).

Jaime Escalante, like other super teachers, was the ultimate role model for his students. He lived what he asked them to live: work hard, care about high goals, help others to make good choices, encourage people to do their best, be on time, have enthusiasm, have fun in learning, and have strong personal values that work today and build toward a positive future.

Escalante (2006) said on the Futures Channel:

Teachers have to like to teach.
Teachers have to like to deal with the kids.
Teachers have to have respect for students.
Teachers have to have the respect of students.
When students do not do well, the teacher should examine how the material could have been presented differently, practiced more effectively, and made more interesting to the students. Poor test scores should not be immediately blamed on students.
Every year, semester, month, week, and day teachers should seek to improve teaching methods.
Teachers must find a way to cope with the ups and downs of the daily challenges of teaching.
Teachers need to adapt and create to reach every student, and when a teacher can do that, the teacher will help the student to grow in motivation and abilities.
*Teachers should not give up on any student. Every student in a class watches how the teacher relates to each class member. Lessons are learned every day by students about values, respect, effort, and hope from the actions and words of teachers.
Teachers should in word and deed, encourage students, care about students, believe in students.
Teachers should convey passion for their subject.
Teachers should innovate their teaching constantly, never stop learning.
Be proud to be a teacher.

TEACH students to understand how they learn.

For Jaime Escalante, the crucial element for students to understand, acknowledge, and choose was ‘ganas.’ Introduce and review true stories of people who overcame great adversity to reach a goal. Help students to examine the stories and find the places where the inspiring individual made a choice that led to the next choice, which led to the next choice and onward toward reaching the goal. Students who understand the power of self-efficacy, the ability to believe they are capable of fulfilling desires and reaching goals, will motivate students to work toward goals.

It is also necessary to take the time to help students analyze what might have happened with different choices. Students need to recognize that all choices have effects, including the choice of giving up or the choice to exert effort to reach a goal. Students can imagine what the world would be like if the inspiring individuals studied had never chosen to reach far higher than anyone expected to achieve a goal. Reviewing all the positive results emerging from the inspiring individual’s accomplishments will help students to realize that choices and actions have an effect on others.

Jaime Escalante made choices to work as hard as he could to help his students have high expectations, hope, and success. Escalante was not too proud to do menial work while he worked to learn English and took courses in the United States to qualify for teaching, teaching that he had done for years with success and honor in his native country, Bolivia. Escalante earned his way back to full licensure in a new country and a new language, but he used all his own struggles overcoming challenges to inspire generations of students who were at risk of never having hope or a dream for education.

In March 2010, the day after Jaime Escalante died, President Obama said,

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Jaime Escalante today. While most of us got to know him through the movie that depicted his work teaching inner-city students calculus, the students whose lives he changed remain the true testament to his life's work. Throughout his career, Jaime opened the doors of success and higher education for his students one by one and proved that where a person came from did not have to determine how far they could go. He instilled knowledge in his students, but more importantly, he helped them find the passion and the will to fulfill their potential.

Students can learn that the results of their efforts live on through work, generosity, and relationships. The teacher has opportunities each day to model these crucial life values, especially hard work. Jaime Escalante lives on through the passion for teaching he exhibited and left as an example for others in actions and words. In his presentations for a Futures episode, he said, “We are all concerned about the future of American education. But as I tell my students, you do not enter the future -- you create the future. The future is created through hard work.”

Teaching to Change Lives

Harry

Harry first saw Jaime Escalante’s teaching methods in the movie, Stand and Deliver (1998). What impressed Harry most was the amount of time and effort Escalante put into preparing for classes, engaging the attention of students, even those with only a little knowledge of English, and tutoring students who could succeed if only they could receive some extra help. Escalante’s days were about improving constantly in his teaching and leading his students to improve in their work habits and abilities.

Harry keeps an EFFORTS FOR EXCELLENCE board in his classroom. A person can appear on the Efforts for Excellence by improving in skills, by an act of kindness done for others, by participation in a service project, through an idea that improves life in some way for others. The recognition of efforts shows that Harry cares about progress not just top scores. The variety of ways people can receive recognition shows that Harry sees value in what is done for others as much as in personal achievement in school. Harry himself participates in community projects that improve life from working at a community garden to providing free tutoring after school. Harry’s students see him model the effort and values he wants them to develop.

Shamarla

For her 14-16-year-old students, many of whom had never had a job or regular set of responsibilities, Shamarla has arranged a plan to have the class collect and list all the possible jobs in the town. Over the first half of the school year, each student will research one of the jobs. Students will find out what the hours, pay, necessary training, most rewarding aspects, and worst responsibilities are of the job, Students will also explore how anyone in the job they study could totally change career paths. Work, effort, responsibilities, and goals emerge as important elements for each job and career path option. Shamarla has guest speakers from a variety of job fields visit the class to make a short presentation and then take questions from the students. Ahead of the visit, Shamarla has students learn about interviewing skills and creating questions that will require substantial answers. Students write summaries of the visitor's time in their classroom. Some of the summaries have appeared in the school paper. Shamarla also has the class write thank-you notes throughout the year.

Samuel

The idea of having the highest possible aspirations and ‘ganas’ to pursue a dream appears in the emphasis Samuel has chosen for his young middle school students. He finds stories about people who overcome adversity to reach for their dreams, and who achieve their goals and shares these with his students. In a discussion that follows the shared true story, students elaborate on the challenges the main character overcame. In a compare and contrast chart, the students list ways their lives are like and unlike the person in the story that Samuel shared with them. Comparing and contrasting stand as strategies that aid students in thinking and building language skills to explain their ideas. Students do research on places, people, and events that are in the overcome stories and have discussions on the strengths and weaknesses, plus the level of challenges in each of the life stories.

Sherry

For her senior high school students, Sherry already has a plan based on Bethune’s ideas and ideals that overlap well with Escalante’s value for working hard to achieve one’s goals. The true stories Sherry shares in video clips, articles, and memoirs are just a starting point. Students have an ongoing assignment to watch for true stories of individuals overcoming life challenges to achieve goals higher than anyone might have expected. When they find those stories, they bring them to class and present them. Sherry works to draw students into discussions where opinions have specific reasons behind them. Sherry also tries to help students see ways they can contribute to overcoming community problems by choosing a cause they can care about, not just for the time they are in her class but for a lifetime. The goals students examine and discuss include living as a role model, working hard, showing attention to individuals, and finding ways to foster confidence and strategies for success for their own lives and for others.

References

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Cameron, J. (Producer, Director, & Writer). 1997. The Titanic. [Motion Picture]. USA.

Escalante, J. (1990). Jaime Escalante with director James Cameron. The Futures Channel. Retrieved from http://www.thefutures channel.com/dockets/jaime_escalante/escalante_cameron/

Escalante, J. (2006). On being a teacher. The Futures Channel. http://www.thefutureschannel.com/dockets/jaime_escalante/jaime_on_being_ a_teacher/index.php

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01escalante.html

Johnson, L. (1992). Dangerous minds. New York, NY: St.Martin’s Press.

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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/03/jaime

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Musca, T. (Producer), & Menendez, R. (Writer/Director). 1988. Stand and Deliver [Motion Picture]. USA: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Navarrette, R. (2010 April 2). Jaime Escalante’s lesson for teachers. CNN Opinion. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04- 02/opinion/navarrette.escalante.lessons_1_jaime-escalante-garfield- high-school-calculus?_s=PM:OPINION

Obama, B. H. (2010 March 31). Statement by the President-on the Passing of Jaime Escalante. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-

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Woo, E. (2010 March 31). Jaime Escalante Dies at 79; math teacher who challenged East LA Students to ‘Stand and Deliver.’ Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/31/local/la-me-jaime-escalante