In the movie Stand and Deliver, directed by Ramon Menendez, Mr. Escalante who starts teaching math at a poor high school meets several difficulties at the beginning of the movie. When Mr. Escalante is driving down the street on his way to Garfield High School, he begins to notice dirty walls that are full of graffiti, closed shops, gang members, and poor people. When Mr. Escalante arrives at the school, he notices that there is no order in the hallways.
Such as students are late for classes, and they are disrespectful to teachers. Mr. Escalante is supposed to be a computer teacher at Garfield High School; however, he is told that this high school does not have any computers. As the result, he becomes a math teacher who is determined to “change the system and challenge the students to a higher level of achievement. ” Mr. Escalante is at first not well liked by students, receiving an immense amount of laughs and tricks.
The reason is that students in this high school focus more on entertainment rather than academics. All those tough situations do not defeat Mr. Escalante. He finds his way to solve them step by step. He does not react on the first day, letting the students talk back and throw paper at him. The next day he comes to class with a butcher’s knife and an apron on in order to get the class’s attention. He whacks a huge chunk of an apple out in front of the whole class, which immediately gets the students’ full attention and he begins.
