Jaime Escalante
UPDATE: Just days after I posted this call for help, Sr. Escalante passed away. It is a tremendous loss.
Dear Readers,
Maybe you don’t know who Jaime Escalante is or why I want you to donate money to his cancer battle fund, so let me tell you a little bit about who he is and what he has meant to me.
Sure you can read all about him on Wikipedia, but I want to give you my personal perspective. Jaime Escalante is a retired math teacher. But not just any retired math teacher. He is the math teacher who shook up education, America and perspectives on race and class by teaching Calculus for the first time at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. He made national headlines in 1982 when 18 of his students, all of whom were Chicano/Latino, passed the Advanced Placement exam (score of 3 or higher) and the Educational Testing Service challenged the test results. In 1983, almost double the number passed, and by 1987, over 70 students were passing the AP Calc AB exam and students had begun to pass the BC exam.
Not too long after that a book was released highlighting Escalante’s success, and the movie Stand and Deliver was released, starring another East LA hero as Escalante, Edward James Olmos. (Some of you may be more familiar with Olmos from Battlestar Galactica or my facebook photos.)
The year Stand and Deliver was released, I turned six, I lost my grandfather/best friend to cancer, and I had just entered public school for the first time and discovered a youthful interest in mathematics. (I came home one day demanding that my father teach me times tables.) So, now let me tell you why Jaime Escalante matters to me. Because of him, right as I learned about what math was, I learned another important lesson: that kids from East LA, kids like me, could do math. And not only could we do the basic stuff (like times tables), but we could do some fancy stuff called Calculus too. At age six, I had heard of calculus, and I knew that I should never let anyone tell me I can’t do it.
That lesson stayed with me 8 years later when I was one of six students to earn a passing grade on the AP Calc AB exam. And it was still with me the year following when, after a year of independent study, I earned a passing grade on the AP Calculus BC exam. It was with me every time my AP US History Teacher Mr. Rutschman reminded us of Escalante’s signature quote: YOU MUST HAVE GANAS! (Ganas means something like “the will to succeed.”) And it stayed with me when I proudly took my SAT I and II exams at Garfield High School.
When I think about how I have gotten to where I am, I think of the Nigerian Igbo proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” In my case, Escalante, whom I have never met, is a member of my village. He is a piece of the story. So he’s a big deal to me.
And that is why I am asking you to consider donating whatever you can, whether it’s $1 or $50, to Escalante’s cancer fund. As Edward James Olmos says,
He is seriously ill, and the treatment he needs has depleted all the funds his family can raise. They did not want to ask for help, but we took it upon ourselves to get the word out to all the country and around the world, to make his final days as comfortable as possible — and maybe even give him a chance to beat the cancer that has afflicted him. I . . . am calling for a last National Understanding of his selfless contributions to making a difference in this world.
Indeed. Escalante is not just an ordinary man: he is a local hero and, as they called him over at La Bloga, a Chicano national treasure who transformed our world for the better. If he is to die, we owe him the thanks of comfort in his final days. And, perhaps more importantly, we owe him the fighting chance at life that he gave to so many students in East L.A.
Thanks in advance for your donations!
p.s. As an addendum, I want to be clear that while many teachers never gain the fame and recognition that Jaime Escalante did, I absolutely believe that every teacher has made a tremendous impact. So I hope it’s clear that I’m not at all trying to belittle their contributions by trumpeting Escalante’s.
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