STAND AND DELIVER

Stand and Deliver, is based on true story about Jaime Escalante, a high school math teacher at Garfield High at East Los Angeles. Mr. Escalante strongly believed that he could teach his troubled inner city students Calculus. Mr. Escalante inspires 18 of his students with complicated backgrounds that are struggling with fractions to become math whizzes. Mr. Escalante convinced his own administrators to allow him to teach Calculus and prepared his students for the National Advanced Placement Calculus Exam. Garfield High was in jeopardy in losing their accreditation due to failing grades and test scores. Mr. Escalante informs his administrators that students will rise to the level of expectation all they need is Ganas simply stated Desire.

There is no doubt that, Mr. Escalante subscribed to the Expectation theory when he advocated strongly that yes his students are able to master calculus if he believed in them. Mr. Escalante was so dynamic in and out of the classroom reassuring the students that math is the great equalizer. In other words, their last names or the color of their skin was not going to predict what they could learn.

I give this movie my thumbs up and four stars because it was so uplifting and moving. Mr. Escalante’s teaching skill went out of the box and beyond. When a student no longer was able to attend school because of family obligations Mr. Escalante seeks to convince her father that education is so important for her future as well as her family’s’. In 1982, all of his students passed the advanced placement Calculus Exam. Afterwards, in 1983, 31 passed and 1984, 63 passed and 1985, 77 passed and 1986, 78 passed and in 1987, 87 passed the Calculus Exam. Garfield High educated and changed its negative reputation and the lives of it is students!