Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysStand and Deliver Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Students prepare for an advanced mathematics exam under demanding conditions, then confront doubts about their results. Analyze the relationship among effort, access, trust, and recognition.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 1988
- Genre
- Biographical classroom drama
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 106 minutes
- Director
- Ramón Menéndez
- Screenplay
- Ramón Menéndez & Tom Musca
- Based on
- The work of Jaime Escalante and his Garfield High School students
- Music
- Craig Safan
- Featured cast
- Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rosana DeSoto & Andy García
- Story setting
- Garfield High School, East Los Angeles · A compressed lead-up to the 1982 calculus exams
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- English and Spanish profanity, sexual jokes, and inappropriate comments about female students.
- Threats, school conflict, gang-related pressure, and a teacher’s health crisis.
- Smoking, drinking, financial pressures, and stressful accusations of cheating.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 8–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: AFI credits, history and synopsis · Content advisory (spoilers) · Library of Congress: representation in film