All You Need Is A Leader

4 Pages 1104 Words

All You Need is a leader
“It is an unfortunate fact of life in the United States that Hispanic students achieve less in school, or drop out more often and earlier (Grossman 5).” said in his book, Educating Hispanic Students. An example of this was the story of Angel, a prime drop out student, in the movie Stand and Deliver. The reoccurring theme of high school dropouts in minority communities is also detailed in the stories “Fannie,” by Cherrie Moraga, and “La Guera,” by Anne Dipardo. These stories of real life people and their genuine tales of succeeding in an underprivileged society help to show that if they didn’t have a leader in their life they would not have succeeded. All that these kids needed was someone to show them the way and they would find their path to success.
Angel, a lower class Hispanic student in the movie Stand and Deliver is a troublemaker looking to find his true image. His teacher, Mr. Escalante helped him find himself. Mr. Escalante did this by getting under his skin and telling him that he wouldn’t be good with this harder course, calculus. “Hispanics are not encouraged to take academic courses by their counselors and teachers and are sometimes prevented from doing so.” says (Grossman 72). It wasn’t until after the struggle in this hard course that Angel found his inspiration, it was in the books that he was given to help educate him in math. All Angel needed was a direction and motivation. He already had the “ganas,” or desire to get to the end and succeed. He was filled with the desire to learn and he demonstrated that by going to Mr. Escalante and asking him for the three sets of books so he could learn. His ego needed his “image” until it was time to shed the tough guy appearance. He was not fully convinced of his potential even after his accomplishments of learning calculus with his classmates. He showed that by getting down on himself after the AP tests were thought t...