Stand and Deliver

• As he drives to work the scenery changes. He leaves his middle class neighborhood and arrives in a much poorer neighborhood. Things are dirtier, buildings in disrepair, graffiti--just a different vibe.
• He enters the school for his first day on the job teaching. He walks into the office where there are police officers taking a report. There had been some break in. There was graffiti on the walls and feces in different places. 
• He was hired to teach computers and when he arrived to do so, he discovered that there weren't any computers and that he would be teaching math instead. 
• The classroom itself is pretty bleak; just the basics. 
• The students were unruly. There was a mix of hispanic, bilingual students and white. One kid reading with chaos all around.
• At the end of the day, he goes out to his car to find that it had broken into and his stereo was missing.
• Uses cut apples to illustrate percentages.
• Doesn't let student not answer. Believes in him and finally gets him to answer. 
• Students in a gang.
• In the classroom he uses problems that the students can relate to-- the content in the story problems.
• He connects with the students and earns their trust. 
• The rest of the staff have given up. 
• "They will rise to the level of expectation"
• Home lives of students varied, but in all there wasn't a lot of support for the students academics or true expectation that they would do well and succeed. The parents have a lack of hope and imagination for the kid's futures. 
• He is fearless: breaks up fights, confronts parents, doesn't go with status quo with the other staff.
• He is caring and fatherly--Claudia.
• His enthusiasm for teaching took him away from family time.
• Heart attack.
• school didn't find a substitute teacher that had any math skills to teach while he was out.
• His car was stolen, so he walked home.
• He and the students were frustrated when accused of cheating. They hadn't. Assumption that because of where they were from, they couldn't possibly have done as well as they did on the test. They were discriminated against. They worked so hard, but nothing was changing. Helplessness.
• All kids proved themselves by passing the test a second time. 
• He got his car back with a new paint job.
• The students did well because someone believed in the them and took the time to do what needed to be done, so that they too could see their own potential.
• A legacy was begun and for many years that follows other students also succeeded in math at that school because of that one teacher.