Author: Jay Mathews

If you’ve seen the movie “Stand and Deliver,” you have a grip on what this book is about. It’s the life story of Jaime Escalante who became famous for taking a failing school in East Los Angeles and churning out a high number of students who could pass the Advanced Placement Calculus exam.

It really boils down to him being a master teacher.

While his profile hit the national (international, really) spotlight when some of his students were accused of cheating during this exam, the part that dumbfounded people were the students themselves who were taking it. These were not students expected to perform at such an advanced level.

How did he do it?

Reading his life story and the techniques he used are still inspiring to this day. While we have better tools than what was available to him in the early 80s, the core of how he got his students on board are timeless, universal principles:

Build rapport with your students, show them you care and set high expectations.

I still remember the advice my aunt gave to me as a beginning teacher. She was a person who was well loved by students and staff alike, some of which were my own friends who hated school and everything about it… except her class. When I prompted her for the secrets to her success, she had this to say:

“Just get the students on board with you. Once that happens, you can take them anywhere.”

Getting them on board with you, however, requires an incredible amount of effort, which is often overlooked by a generation of people looking for shortcuts. This is what makes this book refreshing — it shows that no single tool or lesson plan will get students performing at a high level. That task still belongs to the teacher and more specifically, the teacher at heart.