Review Of Mike Rose's 'Lives On The Boundaries'

Lives on the Boundaries by Mike Rose is an inspirational text. Throughout the text Rose is battling with loss and depression, but continues to strive to satisfy his educators. Mike Rose wasn’t the type of student who would go above and beyond to prove himself unless he had some push from his professors. Luckily he received this push throughout his entire educational career. Once an individual receives the invitation it provides a window of opportunity, a support system with the educators, and allows the student to see their potential in the pursuit of greater education. One of my favorite lines throughout this entire book is on page 132, Rose proclaims: “The more I come to understand about education, the more I’ve come to believe in the power

Harold was a student at El Monte, a school that Rose taught at in the Teacher Corps, whom was greatly misunderstood. Mike knew that Harold was strange from the start and said, “I worried about opening up more than I can handle,” but he wanted to get to know what was going on. Rose went to Harold file and realized the assessments, from the person designated by the school to assess the students, that stated: “Harold’s problem is neurological… I think that the problem is even too great for remediation,” (Rose 123) was the cause of all of the misinterpretation. Later in the text Rose states: “With this assessment, Harold was, in a sense, excluded from the school, pushed further away from the healing possibilities of the teacher-student relationship and further toward the cold instrumentation of the clinic.” (Rose 123) Through this section Rose’s tone changes, he goes form informative to despair because he knows how it feels to be misunderstood and thought to be different. Rose had faith in Harold and knew all he needed was someone who saw the potential in him to succeed. The time that Mike spent with Harold, there was a significant difference in the way Harold was succeeding. When Rose first started working with Harold, Harold wouldn’t do much, he would only write one sentence and kept to himself. Rose tried his best to become closer with Harold and make a connection with him on a more caring level, Harold started opening up in his writing and socially. By the end, Harold went from writing a few words to writing a few sentences, and speaking out loud in