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Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose Essay

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Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose The book Lives on the Boundary, written by Mike Rose, provides great insight to what the new teaching professional may anticipate in the classroom. This book may be used to inform a teacher’s philosophy and may render the teacher more effective. Lives on the Boundary is a first person account composed of eight chapters each of which treat a different obstacle faced by Mike Rose in his years as a student and as an educator. More specifically in chapters one through five Mike Rose focuses on his own personal struggles and achievements as a student. Ultimately the aim is to highlight the underpreparedness of some of today’s learners. First and most importantly Mike Rose writes the book in the first …show more content…

Mr. Rose presents many descriptive vignettes of teaching professionals in his life who have influenced him both positively and negatively and whom he has retained for emulation or distinction. These characters in his life include teachers from grammar school throughout his college experience. All have in one way or another left a considerable imprint on his recollection of school and learning. Mike Rose experienced a few teachers who used corporal punishment to control their classrooms. Brother Dill for example he describes as a “troubled and unstable man who also taught freshman English. When his class drifted away form him, which was often, his voice would rise in paranoid accusations, and occasionally he would lose control and shake or smack us.” (Rose 25) Rose also described his physical education who would use violence to “make men out of us.” (Rose 25) Mr. Mitropetros was described as not having much training in teaching English so therefore had students read aloud from Julius Caesar over and over. This did not provide any understanding of the text, only a memorization of the dialogue. (Rose 25) Rose also describes several other teachers who did not have a positive affect on him, but left him questioning their knowledge of the subject they taught. Rose was placed, in error, in a vocational group of students, which was a lower level. He spent two years in that track before being rescued by

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