They say high school is supposed to be some of the best times of your life, but for Mike Rose it is a completely different story. “I Just Wanna Be Average” is an essay written by Mike Rose about how his score and another student’s score were mixed up and Mike was sent to a vocational school. After being at a vocational school, he changed for the worst as a student until the error was found, and he was sent to college prep classes where Jack MacFarland changed him back to a caring student. There are major contrasts between my high school experience and Mike Rose’s experience. Contrasting my high school experience with Mike’s is that first, he went to a private catholic school while I went to a public school. Since he went to a catholic school,
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They are given classes to improve their skills such as shop classes because they are most likely to work as a blue-collar worker. Mike defines how the school system sees vocational students when he says, “You’re defined by your school as “slow”; you’re placed in a curriculum that isn’t designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you’re lucky train you.” From his description of how the school system explains the vocational track, you can about imagine how the students acted. This is the only area where my school experience and Mike’s compared instead of contrasted. In my school, I had students that did not try and they either dropped out or were sent to Alternative Learning Center (ALC), which is very similar to a vocational school. The students that were sent to the ALC School acted very similar to the ones from Mike’s school. Students acted rude to the teachers making their life miserable, but also instead of doing just enough work to get them by they did none at …show more content…
Throughout this whole experience, we learned that his father’s health had been deteriorating and had was put in a wheelchair after falling. Then his father has a stroke and never comes out of the coma during his junior year. Mike ran track during high school, but I played basketball so we both had one sport we played, which was an outside influence to because of practice and getting back from games late. Having a role model in school not only gives you something to look to when times are tough during school, but also to give you motivation. During my high school career, I never really had a role model. Mike and I were similar while he was on the vocational track, but once he went to the college prep classes that completely changed. You know it changed when he says, “Jack MacFarland couldn’t have come into my life at a better time.” Jack MacFarland was Mike’s role model because he is the one that got Mike out of his bad student ways form the vocational track to being a student that cares
They are given classes to improve their skills such as shop classes because they are most likely to work as a blue-collar worker. Mike defines how the school system sees vocational students when he says, “You’re defined by your school as “slow”; you’re placed in a curriculum that isn’t designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you’re lucky train you.” From his description of how the school system explains the vocational track, you can about imagine how the students acted. This is the only area where my school experience and Mike’s compared instead of contrasted. In my school, I had students that did not try and they either dropped out or were sent to Alternative Learning Center (ALC), which is very similar to a vocational school. The students that were sent to the ALC School acted very similar to the ones from Mike’s school. Students acted rude to the teachers making their life miserable, but also instead of doing just enough work to get them by they did none at …show more content…
Throughout this whole experience, we learned that his father’s health had been deteriorating and had was put in a wheelchair after falling. Then his father has a stroke and never comes out of the coma during his junior year. Mike ran track during high school, but I played basketball so we both had one sport we played, which was an outside influence to because of practice and getting back from games late. Having a role model in school not only gives you something to look to when times are tough during school, but also to give you motivation. During my high school career, I never really had a role model. Mike and I were similar while he was on the vocational track, but once he went to the college prep classes that completely changed. You know it changed when he says, “Jack MacFarland couldn’t have come into my life at a better time.” Jack MacFarland was Mike’s role model because he is the one that got Mike out of his bad student ways form the vocational track to being a student that cares