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Jaime Escalante 1930 - 2010

By LeaderTalk Contributor — April 05, 2010 1 min read
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Jaime Escalante died this past Tuesday at the age of 79. In case you are not familiar with him, Escalante was a math teacher, who, against huge odds, successfully taught Calculus to students with very limited math experiences and instruction. Over the years, Escalante’s students scored incredibly well on the AP Calculus test.

In my opinion, the best teacher movie ever made was the telling of Escalante’s story. If you have not seen the film “Stand and Deliver” go rent it now. If you saw it a while ago but you do not remember much, go rent it now. This is a terrific story of one man’s struggle to raise high school students up and out of the barrios of East Los Angeles. Sure, the film is a product of Hollywood, but Escalante described the film as “90% truth, 10% drama”. It is a realistic interpretation of his story.

I think every current and future educator should watch this movie. It is very motivational and inspirational. So, where does “Stand and Deliver” rank on your list of favorite teacher movies? Are there other movies about teachers that you would recommend?

- Dave Sherman

The opinions expressed in LeaderTalk are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.