Escalante's Four Objectives

At one point in high school, my trigonometry teacher played Stand and Deliver to inspire us as we worked towards our own AP exam. To see Jaime Escalante take personal stake in his students academically and emotionally was exactly what I needed to discover what I will be during for the rest of my life: working to inspire passion, curiosity, and excellence in my students. But the question is: how do I pursue this outside of Hollywood fantasies? I believe these goals can be achieved through four objectives: by practicing radical empathy every day, by cultivating agents of social change, by encouraging agency in disenfranchised students, and by providing a nurturing space in which students can grow.
Radical empathy is the very foundation of theatre. …show more content…
These stories do not exist to depress the audience but rather as a call to action: stand for your beliefs, rectify injustice you see in the world, and become champions of love. I intend to inspire agents of social change who are unafraid to stand with the downtrodden. I directed a devised production based around the question, what injustice do you see in your world? Many students wrote about micro-aggressions, cultural appropriation, or comically unfunny stereotypes of people of color but one student was struggling. Every time I asked her that question, she said she did not see injustice in the world because people who loved her surrounded her. I then asked her what she was afraid and she went silent. After a moment, she said she was afraid of being mistaken for a criminal and losing her life because of her skin color. This was during the Black Lives Matter protests. She wrote that phrase down and could not stop writing about what terrified her. Eventually she performed this as a monologue for a sold out show. She saw injustices she had not realized she experienced and she had the ability and space to make art to amend them. This is my goal as an …show more content…
This is not to glorify these students or myself as martyrs but rather to celebrate these challenges and meet them head on. In order to do this, the students must know that not only do they have a teacher upon which they can rely but a community behind them with open arms should they fall. To establish this community, I believe it requires a space where students cherish mistakes and failures as opportunities to learn. It requires students to give themselves permission to be foolish and embarrassing in order to learn to laugh in joy. Once they have given themselves this permission, they can dismiss the self-monitoring, judging spectre that hangs over the shoulder questioning every single decision. I want to create a space where students know that they are respected as individuals, as learners, and as artists by both their peers and by me. This relationship can only be based on mutual understanding, respect, and the combined effort to improve at every opportunity. We are a company. We are an ensemble. And we are going to be learning and growing every single day. We need to give ourselves permission to do so and let our peers do the