Students 'Stand And Deliver' For Former Teacher
At the Garfield fundraiser, former students and community members sign a banner for Escalante. - At the Garfield fundraiser, former students, parents and community members pen fond messages to the teacher the kids nicknamed "Kimo," a play on The Lone Ranger's moniker Kemosabe. (Karen Grigsby Bates / NPR)
The lawn in front of Garfield High School in East Los Angeles was sodden from the morning's rain. But the weather didn't dampen the enthusiasm of many Garfield graduates, who came from all over Los Angeles and beyond to show their support for their former teacher, Jaime Escalante.
Escalante's former students recently learned he is in the end stages of bladder cancer that has spread throughout his body. The medical costs have depleted Escalante's savings, and the students are determined to help out.
'Barrio Kids'
(Karen Grigsby Bates / NPR)
To the astonishment of the outside world, Escalante taught many of these returning graduates math — advanced math, like trigonometry and calculus.
Garfield educates some of Los Angeles' poorest students, many of them from immigrant families, and many of whom never conceived of college as a possibility. But Escalante did.
The Bolivian-born teacher believed math was the portal to any success his students could achieve later in life. So before school formally began, and after school ended, his door was open for extra help. And the students came on weekends and worked through holidays to prepare for the hardest exam of all — the Advanced Placement calculus exam.
(Karen Grigsby Bates / NPR)
"It was hard," says Mark Baca, who now works with a Los Angeles nonprofit. "But he changed the minds of people all over the world about barrio kids."
Escalante's barrio kids became stars, exemplars of what can happen when knowledge-thirsty kids with ganas — a deep desire — to succeed combine with a dedicated teacher with ganas for their success.
"Everything we are, we owe to him," says Sandra Munoz, an attorney who specializes in workers' rights and immigration cases in East Los Angeles. She was not originally an Escalante student.
"But that's what he'd do," she says. "He'd see someone and decide they needed to be in his class. So he pulled me out my sophomore year and put me in his class, and I took math with him. He would teach anybody who wanted to learn — they didn't have to be designated gifted and talented by the school."
Munoz's cousin also ended up an Escalante student, and he was still learning English.
After-Hours Tutoring
Escalante tutored his students until late at night, piled them into his minivan and brought them home to their parents, who trusted Escalante in ways they never would other teachers.
"My mother used to stay up," says Arícelí Lerma, an attorney. "Not to check up on him, but to bring him a plate of food because she knew how hard he was working!"
Escalante, whose students mischievously nicknamed him "Kimo" (a play on The Lone Ranger's Kemosabe moniker), would not only work with his students until they were all ready to drop from exhaustion, he employed them in the summers as tutors. And he showed them that the best colleges in the country were not beyond their reach.
Lerma reels off a partial list of where she and other Escalante students from the class of 1991 went: Occidental, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, MIT, Wellesley.
Dolores Arredondo, who is now a bank vice president went to Wellesley. She said that one year, Escalante appeared at the Pachanga celebration for Latino students that the Ivy League and Seven Sisters colleges held on the East Coast. It was a home-style Thanksgiving for those who couldn't afford to fly home.
"Someone told me they'd asked Mr. Escalante to speak, and he did," Arredondo says. "Not only did he come, he came with a suitcase full of tamales made in East L.A." A thoughtful taste of home for students who hadn't been there in a while.
Giving Back To 'Kimo'
Now, even though he hasn't asked for it, Escalante is getting his old students' help.
Actor Edward James Olmos, who received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Escalante in the 1988 hit movie Stand and Deliver, is spearheading an effort to support Escalante and his family in what looks to be the teacher's final days.
"Yes, he's dying," Olmos says. "We all will, eventually. But what we want is to die in comfort and dignity, with our loved ones around us. After all that Kimo has done for us, it's the least we can do."
Back at Garfield, more people stream onto the school's lawn to sign a big banner that will be sent to Escalante. He is staying with his son, Jaime Jr., in Sacramento, Calif., so he can commute to Reno, Nev., for medical treatment.
As a Bolivian band plays in homage to Escalante's birth country, some people write checks or contribute cash. And drivers and passers-by stuff money into buckets shaken by two Garfield mascots — 6-foot felt bulldogs.
At the end of the day, the former students have raised almost $17,000, a sign that Escalante's kids and the community he made so proud were ready to stand and deliver for him.
9(MDAyNzUwMDI2MDEyNTA3MTU5NzcyNTQyNA004))
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Back in the late '80s, a dedicated high school teacher in East Los Angeles inspired a hit movie. "Stand and Deliver" was the story of Jaime Escalante, who convinced his students they could do anything with a good education.
Recently, Escalante's family revealed that he's dying of cancer and that he's run out of money. So now, the teacher's many admirers are standing up and delivering for him.
NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports.
Unidentified Man #1: Come on, move on.
(Soundbite of applause)
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: The light drizzle on a recent afternoon didn't dampen the enthusiasm of Garfield's cheerleaders.
Unidentified Group: G-A-R-F-I-E-L-D...
BATES: They shook their pompoms on the street in front of Garfield High and encouraged passersby and drivers to drop donations in buckets held by students dressed as bulldogs, their school's mascot.
Unidentified Group: (Unintelligible).
Unidentified Woman #1: That's Ms. Escalante.
BATES: From the early '80s through 1991, Bolivian-born Jaime Escalante successfully taught calculus and other advanced math classes at Garfield to Latino kids who were routinely written off by society. Mark Baca says, by teaching students like him the rigorous discipline...
Mr. MARK BACA: He changed the minds of people all over the world about barrio kids.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BACA: But we love Kimo because he was our mentor, he was our teacher, he was our friend, and he motivated us to believe in ourselves.
BATES: And the barrio kids who mastered algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus under Escalante have come back to show their gratitude.
Lawyer Araceli Lerma reels off a partial list of schools that accepted Escalante's students from her 1991 graduating class.
Ms. ARACELI LERMA (Attorney): My classmates, folks went to Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, MIT...
Unidentified Woman #2: Wellesley.
Unidentified Woman #3: Wellesley.
BATES: Escalante's story was immortalized in the motion picture "Stand and Deliver." Edward James Olmos earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Escalante, and the two have remained close ever since.
Now, Olmos is spearheading the effort to help his friend in the final stages of Escalante's illness. Olmos says it's the least they can do for the teacher his kids affectionately nicknamed Kimo, short for kemosabe, he who knows.
Mr. EDWARD JAMES OLMOS (Actor): To say thank you to someone while they're alive is the best way of communicating your love for them.
BATES: What Kimo did for his kids, Olmos says, is hard for people who don't come from here to fully appreciate.
Mr. OLMOS: He started off in a very small inner city school, showed the entire country that these kids that were from intensely difficult environments were capable of handling what he called the great equalizer, which was mathematics.
BATES: Math, Escalante believes, is the portal to understanding almost everything else. If you can figure out the patterns, the logic of math, you can do anything.
Lawyer Sandra Munoz says Kimo ignored labels and classifications like gifted and honors.
Ms. SANDRA MUNOZ (Attorney): The thing about Mr. Escalante is he didn't care whether or not you were designated in the gifted and talented program. He gave opportunities to everybody.
BATES: And as this clip from "Stand and Deliver" shows, he expected them to work for it, even when other kids got time off.
(Soundbite of film, "Stand and Deliver")
Unidentified Man #2 (Actor): (As character) Saturdays? We've got to come on Saturdays, too? And no vacation?
Mr. OLMOS: (As Jaime Escalante) Yup, pass the AP exam and you get college credit.
BATES: What it took was ganas, the desire, the will to do the work.
In a comfortable house in the town of Whittier, classmates Dolores Arredondo and Alicia Barrera are leafing through their Garfield yearbook.
Unidentified Woman #4: It's embarrassing, right? All that hair in the '80s.
BATES: Barrera reads Escalante's inscription.
Ms. ALICIA BARRERA: Remember you are the best, love Jaime, stand and deliver.
BATES: Barrera says that was Kimo's mantra to his students: Work hard, then work harder. You can do this because you are the best, which doesn't mean it'll be simple, he told their class when he spoke at their 1991 graduation.
Mr. JAIME ESCALANTE: You must be ready to work harder than you ever worked before.
Ms. BARRERA: And once we went to college, math wasn't as hard. You know, we were - you know, most of the classes weren't as bad as because they didn't require as much as what he had required from us.
BATES: Barrera's classmate, Dolores Arredondo, is vice president at one of California's largest banks. She becomes visibly emotional about Escalante's legacy.
Ms. DOLORES ARREDONDO: He brought so much pride to the school, to the neighborhood. He even, I think, elevated the standards that other teachers had for themselves.
BATES: She's eager to help the man who she says changed their lives.
Ms. ARREDONDO: That's why I think we all feel this sense of responsibility not just to him but to his family because they shared him with us, and now we got to give back to them.
BATES: And they will. Escalante's former students have the ganas to see that their beloved mentor gets the support he needs.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
