Math Teachers Lauded for Inspiring Students

Two San Fernando Valley teachers were awarded $2,000 each for working to make algebra and geometry enjoyable for their students.

Nowshad Monishi of Reseda High School and Lisa Young of Cleveland High School, also in Reseda, were among five Los Angeles-area teachers who received the Jaime Escalante Mathematics Teachers Awards in a ceremony in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.

Students wrote essays nominating the math teachers, describing the instructors’ passion for and tireless devotion to teaching math, which inspired some students to work harder and achieve better grades than they had expected.

“In previous years . . . I set aside my math homework as the last thing to do: I dreaded doing it,” wrote Leo Feler, one of Monishi’s 10th-grade geometry students.

“[But] toward the beginning of the second semester in geometry, the first thing I would do was my geometry homework. . . . I loved every minute of it.”

From this year’s pool of 73 nominees, a panel of teachers and community members selected the five winners, according to John McDonald, spokesman for the Los Angeles Education Partnership, a nonprofit organization.

Other winners were Diana Fedrick of Casimir Middle School in Torrance, Paul Hammond of Santa Monica Adult School and John Kambe of Belvedere Middle School in East Los Angeles.

The prizes, funded by ARCO, were initially given in 1989 through LAEP. To date, about $70,000 has been awarded to teachers, McDonald said.

The honor is named for Jaime Escalante, an East L.A. teacher who coached his math-shy students to excel in the Advanced Placement calculus exam. His story was dramatized in the movie “Stand and Deliver.”