According to Wikipedia, Jaime Escalante was a Bolivian teacher who, subsequently, had two teachers for parents as well. When he had moved to America and started teaching at Garfield High School in 1974, he was so discouraged by his first experience with his students that he called his previous boss and asked for his job back. It wasn't until a small group of students agreed to take an Algebra class, that he decided to stay. Those 12 students went on to pass the AP Calculus exam, baffling everybody. However, it was not an easy road for anybody, especially for Escalante. He received opposition from not only students and their families, but from fellow faculty members as well. While the film shows a rapid success rate with his students, it wasn't until several years later that Escalante reached that level of success, and taught an actual Calculus class.
Wiki Quote states: "He had already earned the criticism of an administrator who disapproved of his requiring the students to answer a homework question before being allowed into the classroom. "He told me to just get them inside," Escalante reported, "but I said, there is no teaching, no learning going on"...... Over the next few years Escalante's calculus program continued to grow but not without its own price. Tensions that surfaced when his career began at Garfield escalated. In his final years at Garfield, Escalante received threats and hate mail from various individuals."
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