The Sage from the East: Michael Xu’s Story as a Mirror to America’s Math Education Crisis

https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Resources/Michael_Xu_Success_v_America_Math_Ed_Crisis.pdf

by Ling Huang

Most people only know Jaime Escalante from Stand and Deliver. Few know there was a Chinese immigrant teacher who did something just as extraordinary:
For 20 years in the Arizona desert, he took the state’s poorest Indigenous, Latino, and Black middle schoolers —many with broken English and shattered foundations —and turned them into statewide champions. His name is Michael Xu. The “Sage from the East.” A man who survived China’s Cultural Revolution, hard labor in the jungle, lifelong dyslexia, and insomnia…. yet became a legendary math teacher. This thread is the first time his full story is being told. And it reveals something much bigger than one teacher’s success.