When Jesse De La Huerta started school in Brownsville, a border city on the southernmost tip of Texas, he did not speak English. He began his pre-kindergarten class as an English as Second Language student. But by his kindergarten year, his mother put him in all English classes. “She felt it was ‘sink or swim’ and wanted me to become full English speaking as quickly as possible rather than get stuck in the ESL classes,” he recalls now. “And she was right.”

As he learned from his mother, math is a universal language. “My mom is from Mexico and she didn’t know English all that well, so when I was growing up, the only thing she could help me with that did not require reading English was math. While I was in the early grades, she was working as a teacher’s aide for the 5th and 6th grade classes at the same school, so she would help me with math and give me the same work to do that the 5th and 6th grade students were doing. I got a good foundation early and I felt good doing the math because I was taught pretty well,” he explains.

It wasn’t long before Jesse was teaching his teachers. He remembers the first time his class was offered a bonus problem in critical thinking. “The teacher wasn’t expecting anybody to do it, but I went home and worked on it and solved it.” His teacher couldn’t figure out how he solved the problem, so he showed her how to work through it. She was so impressed that she encouraged him to take more math courses after his first experience with success. Today they are still in contact and he invited her to his graduation.

While he was in high school, Jesse took eight Advanced Placement Program* courses in math, which gave him a significant head start on his math classes at the University of Texas. He started out majoring in mechanical engineering, then switched to math, and then added some business courses. When he had accumulated 189 hours, the university sent him a letter saying he had too many hours; he needed to choose one of the subjects as a major and graduate.

He had heard about the new UTeach program and liked the fact that it offered two degrees at once and that “they let you teach right off the bat to see if you like it.”

“Once I saw that I liked it – and I figured I would – I decided to finish as a math major and become a teacher,” he recalls. “I discovered I have this way of explaining math to people that makes sense to them.”

When he finally got his diploma from UT, he put it in a big frame and gave it to his mother. After all, she was one of his most dedicated teachers. When he had balked after high school at going way to college – “I can be hard-headed” – it was his mother who had convinced him that he would be wasting his life if he did not continue his education.

Education now has become a family business. His young brother teaches physical education and health and his older sister is an assistant principal.

Jesse’s first teaching assignment after he graduated from college turned out to be a fortuitous “accident.” He was assigned to fill a last-minute teaching vacancy at the International High School. He explains, “There are kids from all over the world who come to learn English and the curriculum at the same time. I realized helping them was exactly what I wanted to do. The kids here love to be here and want to learn. I see a big difference from day one to the final day. We have 16 different countries represented here. The students come from a different world. Many of them have never seen a computer or used a computer. Ninety percent of them speak Spanish, so I can use my Spanish. But if I can’t, I will draw it for them, sing it for them, dance, whatever I need to do to help them learn math.”

Today he is a big fan of the UTeach program and has encouraged his friends to enter the program. “It’s a great thing. Our country needs the math teachers and a lot of students don’t know what to do with their lives. I explain to them, ‘You need that little piece of paper that says you graduated and if you like math and can also get a teaching option at the same time, that gives you an extra option.’ Some of my friends in business have seen how much I enjoy what I do and they have gone back to school and are going to try UTeach.”

“Not everyone can be a teacher,” he adds, “But UTeach gives you the chance to see for yourself and if it is not a good fit, you can get out. If you stay in, UTeach prepares you so well to teach with different methods, you feel well-prepared from the start.”

*AP, Advanced Placement Program and SAT are registered trademarks of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.