Second part of “Stand and Deliver”

Such passion, such dedication, such a natural teacher. He wanted them to succeed, he pushed them, taught them well, and they learned it. In the movie anyway. It is an excellent movie, somewhat of a Cinderella story, very moving. But do teachers like this really exist? I am a bit skeptical that a former engineer could just walk right into a school and successfully do something that has not ever been done. Teach a bunch of rag tag teenagers from a bad part of town higher level math on the first try. All of the great teachers I have had in life had one thing in common, time, they all had quite a few years under their belt, their skills and techniques were honed over time. So my reaction to the movie is that it is a heartwarming story, but it is just that, a great story based on a   pretty good true story. Maybe Wikipedia is wrong ( it usually isn’t), but according to Wikipedia, Escalante began teaching calculus at Garfield high in 1974, to 14 students, where 5 remained in the class and 2 passed the AP exam. When the students were accused of cheating, they 10 of them did by passing around a flawed answer to a free response, the retake portion of the story is accurate, they did retake the exam and succeed, proving Escalante was a good teacher, (Wikipedia, article “Stand and Deliver”) but it proves that to get to that level, it takes time.