Jaime Escalante 1930-2010

[proud2BlibKansan]

When I was in grad school, Madeline Hunter and her Elements of Effective Instruction was the latest fad. I was a huge fan of Madeline and got to spend a day of PD with her one time. She was awesome; it was probably the best PD I have ever had. Madeline was mad that her work was being distorted by administrators all over the country and insisted that she never meant for her work to become a prescriptive mandate of lesson design for every lesson taught in every classroom in every school in the country. She said it was a nearly impossible mandate.

Anyhow one night in graduate school we were discussing this and our professor said there was only one teacher he had ever seen who taught every lesson perfectly according to the Madeline Hunter plan. And he showed us clips from Stand and Deliver as well as video of Jaime Escalante in his classroom in LA. And Escalante hit on every element of the Hunter Plan. In every lesson.

Then he showed us clips of teaching scenes from other teaching movies. To Sir With Love and Conrack and The Miracle Worker and several others I can't remember. He also had a video of a teacher who had just been named Teacher of the Year in our state.

Not a one of those other teachers came close to matching Escalante's instructional perfection. It was an amazing thing. And considering he was a second career teacher, his talents were even more amazing.

The teaching community lost a master today. Jaime Escalante, thank you for inspiring kids and teachers. You will be sorely missed.

[Dinger]

1. Rest In Peace Dear Teacher

:grouphug: :cry:

[sonias]

2. Rest in peace Jaime Escalante

You did a wonderful job inspiring kids to learn.

:cry:

[LWolf]

3. RIP.

:(


For a couple of decades, every lesson observed for evaluation purposes in my district had to be "Hunterized." It irritated me.

Not because of the structure itself, but because of the "only correct way to structure a lesson" attitude of the district I was working in.

She was right about that. ;)

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Another thing Madeline Hunter told me has really stuck

She was talking about how to motivate kids. And she said she loved to go to basketball practice at UCLA and watch Wooten motivate his players. She got a real kick out of watching a man who had not one hour of formal training in education but knew exactly how to motivate his players. She said she even took a tape recorder so she could play it for her students and show them how a master worked.