inspiration, squared

Hey there & happy April !! It's a new month ... and spring is in the air.

You may have heard on the news earlier this week that Jaime Escalante passed away. You may have never heard of him, but if you saw the movie Stand and Deliver, you know his incredible story well.

The film told how, as a math teacher, he INSPIRED a group of inner-city high-schoolers who had been written-off as failures by the school system and, even worse, by society. He saw their potential and molded them into confident math students with hope for their future. They went from struggling with fractions to mastering Advanced Placement Calculus! But not without confronting trials, struggles, and a hefty dose of discrimination along the way.

Sal and I were enrolled in our second semester of Calculus when this movie came out (1988). I remember our professor saying that we all MUST see it! Plus, that was right around the time Sal and I started dating. So, it's a special movie for us. We own very few movies, but a copy of Stand and Deliver is in our library. We plan to watch it again this weekend. The powerful story never gets old.

I highly recommend it!