A heartwarming story out of San Diego (voiceofsandiego.org)

  This is an incredible story. Crawford High School in San Diego has its own version of the famed Jaime Escalante in Jonathan Winn. Winn teaches an Advanced Placement Calculus class. This class, and this school, have defied the odds, broken the rules, and questioned authority. As a result, a success story was born.

Here's an excerpt from Emily Alpert's article over at Voice of San Diego, please read the entire story. You will be inspired:

It starts as a distant ringing, faint over the hubbub of students flipping through binders in the small theater. It grows from the bronze bowl that Jonathan Winn cups in one hand as he swirls a mallet inside to set off the unearthly sound.

It fills the room. The chatting stops. More than 70 teenagers turn to the man who stands before them onstage, his eyes closed. The ringing hangs in the air like the end of a poem.

"GOOD MORNING CALCULUS!" Winn suddenly screams, like a sportscaster calling a goal.

This isn't your typical calculus class. Advanced Placement classes are prized by kids at elite schools, who nab them for college credit. This is Crawford High, where students struggle with English and test scores are among the lowest in San Diego Unified. Classes are supposed to be small; Crawford intentionally made this one big, like a college lecture. Kids are supposed to be prepared for tough classes; Crawford threw calculus open to anyone. It has a few whiteboards on a bare stage. Yet it seems to be working.

"They're in there and they're getting As," says Bill Laine, principal of one of Crawford's schools-within-a-school. "We raise the bar and the kids excel."

Calculus was rarely offered here before and usually drew fewer than a dozen students. Skeptics said it wouldn't work. But scores of teens file into the theatre at 7:15 a.m. to hear Winn explain derivatives.

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E.C. :)