Remembering Math Teacher Jaime Escalante
29 December 2010
Jaime Escalante talks with a student in his calculus class at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, Cailfornia in 1988.
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Today we remember a man who was considered one of the best teachers in the United States. Jaime Alfonso Escalante was born in nineteen thirty in La Paz, Bolivia. Both his parents were teachers. He taught math and science in his home country for twelve years.
In the nineteen sixties, Jaime Escalante and his wife Fabiola came to the United States. During the next several years, he learned to speak English and repeated his college education and teacher training.
In nineteen seventy-four, Mr. Escalante was hired at Garfield High School to teach mathematics.
The school was in a poor area of Los Angeles, California. Many of the students had serious problems with illegal drugs, gangs and violence. The school was in danger of losing its official approval to operate.
Mr. Escalante’s students were mostly Mexican-Americans from a Spanish-speaking area of the city. Many were the worst students at the school and thought to be “unteachable.” But Mr. Escalante pushed the group to work hard. He told them basic math was too easy and that they had the ability to do harder work.
He told his students that he believed in them, but they must have the desire to be successful.
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