Success Keeps Multiplying for Jaime Escalante

It’s cold and rainy at 8 a.m. on a recent Saturday. The northeast corner of the campus at Hiram Johnson High School is empty.

The quiet is broken as Jaime Escalante unlocks a campus gate. Escalante, whose success teaching calculus to underachieving Latino students at Garfield High in Los Angeles became famous through the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver,” parks his car between rows of classrooms and opens his room for voluntary tutoring.

At 8:10, a student arrives munching a submarine sandwich. Others trickle in, one with fast-food fajitas . By 10 a.m., 30 students are working together on algebra, trigonometry, math analysis and calculus. Escalante and four other teachers wander the room answering questions.

“It amazes me that this many kids would come Saturday morning for help with math,” says Annette Manolis, a calculus teacher.

The successful tutorial on a rainy weekend is a sign that Escalante’s program, which won national acclaim at Garfield, is being re-established in this multiracial working class neighborhood.

As at Garfield, Escalante, 64, tutors students at 7:30 a.m., an hour before classes; again at noon, when he often buys the kids’ lunches, and after school--as well as on Saturdays. He told recent classes that he’d be available on Mother’s Day.

He has also started a summer program that will provide free breakfast and lunch for an expected 174 students. They’ll be eligible to complete a year of math and to earn $100 for academic excellence and another $100 for perfect attendance.

The extra help is to prepare students for the advanced placement calculus test, the most rigorous advanced math test for high school students. About 30 students at Johnson took the test this year, Manolis says, almost the same number as two years ago. But the number is expected to grow as Escalante’s program develops.

Escalante’s teaching at Garfield enabled a small group of students to pass the AP calculus exam in 1982. The Educational Testing Service, which administers the test, invalidated the scores, believing that the students had cheated. Most of the 18 pupils retook the test and passed.

By 1991, the number of Garfield students taking advanced placement examinations in math and other subjects soared to 570.

That was the year Escalante left the school, citing faculty politics and petty jealousies.

He was hired by the Sacramento school system almost instantly, Escalante says, when the head of a foundation he had worked with called the superintendent of schools.

The district pays his salary (about $48,000), but the National Science Foundation, the Atlantic Richfield Co. and the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education underwrite much of his equipment and special programs.

Escalante says that he doesn’t want to talk about leaving Garfield, and that he tried hard not to alienate anyone when he arrived at his new school.

“The first year,” he says, “I was very quiet.”

Nevertheless, some teachers were resentful.

“There was a lot of resentment when Jaime came in because it was a surprise,” says math teacher Thomas Pugh. “A few teachers heard about it on the radio on the way to school. That day the principal comes up and says Jaime Escalante is coming here.”

Some teachers also wanted air-conditioned rooms and other perks that Escalante was getting. (Escalante demanded air conditioning for the comfort of his students. His program donors underwrote the cost.)

Pugh adds that he felt intimidated: “I thought, ‘I’m not that good.’ I don’t want to look like a fool in front of him.”

The tension, Pugh says, evaporated quickly.

“Jaime was pretty guarded when he first came. There were no interviews or observations to the press.”

In his first year at Johnson, Escalante didn’t teach calculus or attempt to take over classes from Manolis, who still handles one section of the course.

After two years of teaching introductory courses, Escalante taught beginning calculus the last two years. He’ll teach advanced calculus in September.

“I don’t think he’s taken over,” Manolis says. “If we have a math department meeting and he’s there, he states his opinion like anyone else.”

Manolis says her students are helped by the Saturday review sessions and summer classes, which are part of Escalante’s program. The pair can also “set up review sessions together for students. And it’s always nice to have a dialogue with someone about teaching strategies.”

Escalante’s strategies involve using almost any means to get students to concentrate.

His room is plastered with posters of athletes--Joe Montana, Wayne Gretsky--and homilies: “What I See in My Mind Is What I Get in My Life.” He plays music while students work on problems, he says, because it “relaxes the spirit and makes them feel energized.” Recently he popped the soundtrack from the movie “Sliver” into the sound system and serenaded students with UB40’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.”

He says he played for the Dodgers and when students look skeptical, pulls a Dodger uniform out of a closet with “No. 1” on the front and “Escalante” on the back. (The uniform was actually a gift from the team.)

He winds up two sets of walking feet to illustrate parallel or perpendicular lines.

He uses pinwheels, a roll of toilet paper, an oatmeal box or a basketball cut in half to make a point about shapes or mathematical concepts.

And when he finishes making a point and students begin working on problems, he roams the room asking, “Question?” “Question?” “Question?”

“We need to innovate, to make something attractive for these kids,” he says. “So that they think this guy is going to do something new today, not the same monotonous thing.”

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Students say his points, delivered in a thick Bolivian accent and punctuated by frequent “ummmmmmms,” are often hard to understand. But after they take work home and think about it, the concepts become clear.

“He finds shortcuts or easy ways to solve a problem so you save time,” says Suzanne Huynh, 16, a junior in Escalante’s calculus class. “He uses props to help us visualize the problem and make it more understandable. It’s not as boring as if the problem is just written on the board, and maybe more fun.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, Escalante climbs into his van and heads home. He plugs in a tape of Enrico Caruso. “I love music,” he says. He prefers opera, classical and Bolivian music, and says students consider him eccentric because he doesn’t always share their tastes.

Traffic is heavy and it takes almost an hour to reach the home he shares with his wife, Fabiola, and his son Fernando, 25, a graduate student. Another son, Jaime Jr., 35, lives in Santa Barbara.

At home, Escalante relaxes in his study, surrounded by plaques, trophies and pictures, including photos with Presidents Reagan and Bush. On one wall are 12 shelves of math books arranged by subject.

“I only read math,” he says. “I’m too lazy to read other things. But math I can read until 1 or 2 a.m.”

He finds his life satisfying.

“I have the classes I’m building in my program,” he says. “I have the students I want. I have a great faculty in the math department.

“I’m not looking for recognition,” he says. “I’m trying to prove that potential is anywhere and we can teach any kid if we have the ganas [desire] to do it.”