Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes by Juan Felipe Herrera

Author:Juan Felipe Herrera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2014-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

Jaime Alfonso Escalante

BORN: DECEMBER 31, 1930, IN LA PAZ, BOLIVIA

DIED: MARCH 30, 2010, IN ROSEVILLE, CALIFORNIA

High on the plateaus of the Bolivian altiplano, skinny Jaime collected and wound torn tire strips into a tight ball. Then he slammed it against a wall to win at one his favorite games—frontón, handball. He loved to compete. And he loved math.

Jaime competed with himself—to stay alive and positive. He worked at every spelling game his maternal grandfather José tossed him. His parents had been sent by the government to teach in the Aymara and Quechua Indian villages, but when Jaime was nine, his mother decided to return to La Paz, where he had been born.

At the elementary school in the city, other students laughed at his clothes—he wore Aymara fire-colored long-sleeved shirts, like the aguayo weavings in the Inca villages. But Jaime fired back with his arithmetic skills and basketball, soccer, and handball moves.

By the time he was fourteen, his mother scratched up enough money to enroll agile Jaime into the prestigious San Calixto Jesuit High School where he devoured advanced books on physics. He was a popular math whiz and a wiry street fighter—and a prankster shooting firecrackers under a professor’s gown at graduation.

Because his mother could not afford engineering school, Jaime went on to earn a teaching credential, and by 1961, he had become a successful math teacher. He told his students: “Lo mediocre no sirve,” “Mediocrity is worthless.” He challenged them to be fearless. He tried new approaches and if something didn’t work, he changed his methods.

Then he made a decision for himself. Jaime told his wife, Fabiola, “I cannot progress here. I am going to America and I am going to start from zero.”

Two years later, he left the family for one year, then brought them to Los Angeles where he had found work mopping floors and being a short-order cook. He had to start his college career all over again in the United States. For ten years, he focused on his evening classes at Pasadena Community College in order to obtain a college degree and a teaching credential as he worked a second job as an electronics tech. Then Jaime was ready to leap into teaching again.

“Teaching is touching life.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.