I Wanna Be Average By Mike Rose

Mike Rose is anything but average: he has published poetry, scholarly research, a textbook, and two widely praised books on education in Amer­ica. A professor in the School of Education at UCLA, Rose has won awards from the National Academy of Education, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Below you'll read the story of how this highly successful teacher and writer started high school in the "vocational education" track, learning dead-end skills from teachers who were often underprepared or incompetent. Rose shows that students whom the system has written off can have tremendous unreal­ized potential, and his critique of the school system

I asked my teachers when I needed to and read more books. Books helped me in learning new words and improved my spelling. Being placed in an English support class for testing low on the MAP test made me realize that I needed to try harder. I received one of the highest scores the following year and moved up to Accelerated English. This achievement made me realize I had determination; I worked very hard to obtain high grades. Advanced courses increased my confidence because I knew they could prepare me more for college. My goal was to be educated so I could be even more

In Mike Rose’s, “I Just Wanna Be Average”, he discusses his personal struggles during his high school career. From the very beginning Rose was expected to do poorly due to being placed in a vocational program. This literary piece describes a man’s endeavors to make the best of his situation and to eventually make something of himself.

“I Just Wanna Be Average”, is a book written by Mike Rose, which goes into detail about how he went through an education system that wasn’t designed for himself, but more so for the students that we’re not so smart. In this environment he was with both teachers and students that didn’t care much about school. He went to describe how even though the students wasn’t very educated many of them was special in their own ways, while others just never tried in school. One of the students he meet was Ken Harvey, who when asked about their opinion on working hard to reach their goals said, “I just wanted to be average”. Rose questioned why Harvey would settle for less than he had potential for. During Rose’s sophomore year his teacher checked his school

One of the most popular conversations parents have when their child is born is education. A question that comes up is when should the child start school? The usual age to start kindergarten is about five to six years of age. At a young age kids are like a sponge and learn a lot in the first few years. Teachers are a great influence on the children considering they are at school between seven to eight hours a day. Over time

In “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Mike Rose goes back to his years in school, in which he also referred to them as bottom level classes. Throughout his schooling, he was placed in low-ranking classes by

I was so mad that just wanted to scream till my voice dried out. My face was redder then the fake apple that she would pass to student who had the right to talk or answer the question. I had to step out the room and get some air because that was just too much. I couldn’t accept that one teacher didn’t gave me any chance because she thought I was unintelligent. Next day I asked to change my schedule but was denied since it was almost near the finals and change my schedule would change all the other course. I explain to the teacher how I had felt and the reason behind me stepping out the meeting, she was so shocked as I was when she gave a piece of chocolate and hug saying how sorry she was. I had no words to explain what was going in my mind because it was full of confusion, shocked and gladness that she had finely understood me. That cold feeling stopped and I began to continue to asking questions when I didn’t knew answers. Slowly she had started to stop ignoring my hand calls and started asking me

Rhetorical analysis: “I Just Wanna Be Average” In the schooling system that we have now a days students are separated by their intelligence. The way that they are separated by their intelligence is by taking a test for their IQ, they are then separated into different classes. What people don’t realize is that even the students who are put in the lowest classes can have great potential and can move up. In article “I Just Wanna Be Average” author Mike Rose uses ethos and pathos in order to prove students who are wrtiiten off of the school system have unrealized potential and the failure of students who go through high school belligerent, fearful, bored, etc.

In “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose, Rose talks about his school life throughout this short story. He explains multiple things that went wrong, from having bad teachers, to getting abused, and never realizing he deserved to be treated with respect. Being treated in a negative way at school affects your attitude and behavior in class and also outside of class. Not one of the children in Rose’s class cared about school because they realized that the teachers had no training in the subjects being taught and were showing no attention to caring about the futures of the students sitting in front of them day after day. When Rose explains his schooling, he tells us that he was placed in the wrong track, had horrible teachers, and eventually stopped believing in himself.

The essay of I Just Want To Be Average by Mike Rose is a story of Rose’s high school experience. When Rose was a freshman, he was placed in his school’s vocational program, a program meant for the “underachieving” students. This program was meant to teach these struggling students specific trades when they could not get by in the other academic classes. Rose goes on to explain the many personalities he met in the vocational program and how they impacted his life. Rose told about how he was very unmotivated and not interested in education his first few years of school simply for the fact that his peers and teachers were also unmotivated and not interested. It seemed to be that students in the vocational program were not deemed as important and just slipped through the cracks of their education.

Have you ever been misplaced somewhere and should have been somewhere else? Well, Mike Rose in “I Just Wanna Be Average” understands what it feels like to be misplaced. It first all started after he took all his standardized tests to get into the school. Throughout that time period Mike Rose’s test and some other person with the last name Rose got their test scores mixed up. Furthermore, this was the start of how it affected Mike Rose’s academic career.

Part 1: To be perfectly honest, I’ve never had a time where I have felt very isolated or very included in a school setting, well not a time that is particularly memorable. But, from talking to my friend, Caroline, she remembers her senior year of high school she was had a writing class and the majority kids in that class were the “cool/popular kids.” She recalls many instances where her teacher, Mrs. Upadhyay, would mock or make fun of the questions she would ask or the comments she would make in class. There was one instance where there were a group of popular boys in class and they were insanely chatty. Her teacher never asked them to stop talking but when Caroline turned to her partner to ask a question she was immediately called out. Another instance was when Mrs. Upadhyay was lecturing and a lightbulb went off in Caroline’s head. She thought she would say something that would really impress the class and help them understand the lecture. She raised her hand, when her teacher saw it instead of calling on her she chose to ignore her. Caroline thought it was okay though, she would wait until Mrs. Upadhyay was finished. Shortly there after, a popular boy raised his hand and she stopped her lecture to call on him. Caroline was completely appalled by this. She immediately cut off the

While in elementary school I was diagnosed with a type of dyslexia, which did not make school easy for me because I already had a speech impediment due to being tongue tied. I got taken out of class everyday in elementary school to work on my speech and reading skills. Most teachers just thought I was not intelligent and put me in the lowest reading groups. Third grade was a turning point for me; my teacher, Mrs. Eddy, saw that I was intelligent enough to understand the hardest material, and she did her own research online which no other teacher had done for me. She helped me come up with techniques to help me read with my dyslexia more than any other teacher or reading coach had in school. I even started to attend a speech class in Edinboro every other day after school. I eventually learned how to work around my dyslexia and speech impediment. By the time I was in sixth grade, I did not need any more special attention for my impediments, and I started to take school more seriously. Now that I am over that tedious obstacle in my life, I am always striving to be the best version of myself as I can possibly be. I have worked way too hard to be stopped by anything that stands in between me and my

I had the meanest-seeming, harshest teacher you could get as a ten-year-old, Mrs. Farrier. She was a creative writing and basic politics teacher, and she was merciless when she evaluated our attempts to write from her prompt of unicorns and pegai (apparently that’s plural for ‘pegasus’). Red pen slashed sentences and paragraphs and forcing me to write again on fresh paper, she simultaneously made me loathe writing and absolutely made a better writer. I learned to value details and plot consistency, introductions to draw an audience in and how to flow down to a resolution, but I absolutely hated her

In the American schooling system, children begin primary school around the age of six, this is called elementary school and most students stay there for five to six years before they go on to secondary school which involves middle school and high school. After graduating high school some students may go on to “higher education” known as college, but any schooling done after high school is no longer mandatory.