Jamie Alfonso Escalante Guiterrez, started off as a young troublemaker in La Paz Bolivia, an immigrant who became a great and successful teacher in Los Angeles. He helped lower class students in Garfield High school improve in their math, specifically AP calculus. He taught students who were unmotivated and difficult to teach. People took notice of him helping the lower class students pass advanced placement calculus at a poor Hispanic high school. That was the reason there was a movie about him called “Stand and Deliver” and a book written about him called “The best teacher in America”. He believed that when students are prepared and motivated, they can succeed at advanced level work no matter where they are from or who they are. For how successful he was with the students, people started to fund his educational program.

When he was little, he had parents who were both teachers but they weren’t well-paid. As a child, he played many sports to keep himself busy, and at times he would spend time with his grandfather, who was also a schoolteacher. He once had hoped to go to an engineering school, but instead, he joined the army. As a young adult, he taught at three top-rated Bolivia schools before he immigrated to the United States with his wife in hopes of a brighter future for their newborn. He first worked at a cafe as a janitor before he enrolled in English classes at Pasadena City College, across the street from the cafe. Although he was later promoted to a higher-paying position, the thought of being a teacher in a highschool stuck to his mind.

He was strict and asked his students to work longer and harder. He was also a jokester in his classroom, wearing funny hats and cracking jokes. He was nicknamed, “Kemo Sabe” by his students that he gained trust and admiration from. Students who took his class improved and became successful in math.

In 1982, fourteen out of eighteen of his students were accused of cheating after they passed the advanced placement calculus test. Escalante became upset that the Educational Testing Service was investigating his students and they had to retake the test. The students passed the test again.

He didn’t get along with many of the teachers in the public schools because of what he believed in. He believed that both the students and the educators should be held accountable. Parents and teachers became irritated with his tougher standards and his blunt and uncompromising ways.

He became known all around the world and won several awards. In his older years, he considered working as an education advisor for President George Bush. He worked as an education consultant for the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Eventually, he quit his job and went back to his home, Bolivia.

Escalante died at the age of seventy-nine, the teacher who changed many Los Angeles students' lives forever. Escalante first became a teacher in Garfield High School, after he quit his old job as a janitor. He only had been teaching eighteen students in his class at a time. He helped his students with calculus and had them work long and hard before and after school. One day at a night school, Escalante got a heart attack and disappeared for a week to the hospital. Instead of resting like the doctors told him to do, he came back to Garfield to continue teaching his students. It motivated the students to learn from him wanting to teach them.