Jaime Escalante and ‘ganas’

The death of Jaime Escalante is in the news today. Escalante was the calculus teacher portrayed in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver who had his students in a low-income, East Los Angeles school passing the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Listening to a remembrance today on NPR’s Morning Edition, I heard the word ganas emphasized:

And to make it, Escalante often said, you need ganas, Spanish for desire and drive. Ganas was Escalante’s battle cry — not just in motivating his students, but every time he chided apathetic administrators and jaded teachers.

I wasn’t familiar with the word, so I Googled it. Ganas is related to the English word “gain.” As Spanish-Only.com explains, it is “the you-form of the verb ganar (to earn / to win)” but it also has a added sense of wanting to do something — as mentioned above, desire and drive.

So, “you want to gain” or “you want to earn” or “you want to win.”

Even in dying, Jaime Escalante has taught me something.