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A Long Goodbye For A Legendary Teacher

Natalie Ragus |
April 16, 2010 | 1:48 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

The two-day public memorial started at Garfield High School on Friday. 
(Natalie Ragus)
Mourners descended upon Garfield High School on Friday to bid farewell to Jaime Escalante, the legendary math teacher who turned inner city kids into top calculus students and inspired the 1988 movie, "Stand and Deliver."
Throughout the afternoon, former students and colleagues filed past Escalante's body, which laid in a rose-draped casket set up in his former classroom. Some touched the casket and wept.
The classroom had been rearranged for the memorial to look exactly as it did during Escalante's 15-year tenure at Garfield. 
Banners printed with quintessential Escalante teachings such as "Determination, plus discipline, plus hard work -- that is the path," and "Good manners is the way to obtain better things," lined the walls. The chalkboard in front of the room was covered in calculus equations.
More than 20,000 people are expected to pay their respects to Escalante during a two-day public memorial that started with Friday's vigil at Garfield and will end in a service on the football field at East Los Angeles College, where Escalante -- who died March 30 in Sacramento -- also taught.
Hector Arroyo, who took Escalante's class in 1986 and went on to become a liver surgeon, said the fabled teacher would start class with roll call and a homework check.
"If you didn't have [your homework], he would throw you out of class and lock the doors and let the detention people deal with you," Arroyo said, adding that, although the punishment seemed harsh, "He knew we would learn from it...We needed to deliver on our end."
In 1982, Escalante dismantled the public's conception of what kids from East Los Angeles' poor Hispanic neighborhoods could accomplish when he decided to prepare a group of Garfield's brightest students for the Advanced Placement calculus exam. 
Every student in the class passed the exam, prompting disbelieving officials from the Educational Testing Service to accuse them of cheating. To prove their innocence, the students retook the exam, and most passed a second time. 
The movie, "Stand and Deliver" is based off this incident. 
"We were over-prepared," said Aili Jardea, a Los Angeles entrepreneur. "When we opened up the [testing booklet], we kind of just smiled. We looked at each other like, 'Oh, it's easy.' Most of us just aced it."
Jardea said she and her classmates worked Saturdays, weekends and holidays with Escalante in preparation for the exam.
Escalante, who left Garfield in 1991 and went on to teach in Sacramento and Bolivia, inspired the best from his students because he cared, Jardea said.
"We knew he had given up a lot to be a teacher," she added. "So we felt an obligation to do well."
But it wasn't just his students Escalante inspired.
Escalante welcomed other teachers into his classroom to observe his techniques and take them back to their own classrooms. Garfield Principal Jose Huerta had just started student teaching when he first came across Escalante. 
"I would sit in the back of the classroom and watch him in action," Huerta said. "You know that saying, 'Where there's a will, there's a way?' He took it to a whole other level, coming on Saturdays, even Sundays to work with students."
Lupe Sonnie, who served as assistant principal during Escalante's time at Garfield, agreed. 
"He was the consummate teacher," she said. "There wasn't a student that he didn't think he could learn. He never gave up. He was a teacher 24-7."
On Friday, a buzz descended upon the courtyard in front of Escalante's old classroom as actor Edward James Olmos -- who portrayed the teacher in "Stand and Deliver" and developed a close friendship with Escalante -- arrived. People standing in line to view Escalante's coffin shook hands with Olmos and asked for autographs and pictures.
Olmos compared his friend's life to that of Mother Teresa and Cesar Chavez.
"He changed the course of people's lives," he said.
Contributions can be made to the Jaime Escalante Legacy Project, 236 W. Mountain St., Suite 105, Pasadena, CA 91103 or online.


 

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