V's Pick #6: Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose

I haven't read anything that wasn't for my exam since my last post and when talking with Blythe the other day she suggested I post the books I'm reading anyway...because they ARE books I'm reading and maybe, just maybe, some of them might be interesting to you guys. I'm taking her up on it and I hope doing this will also be a good study tool.

It's no stretch to say that Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared by Mike Rose is my favorite book from the list so far. It's small, it smells like a non-school book (thanks Penguin!) and I decided it would be the book I took on my camping trip during the first weekend of Spring Break. I started reading it while I was waiting for John to get out of the shower on our first morning in the wilderness. A few sentences in, I was wishing John had legs to shave because it was so good I didn't want to put it down! He ended up reading it too - a few pages past me - while I was showering and in just about 14 pages, we had a good hour of discussion about it while walking through swamps later that day. I didn't get a chance to read much more that weekend, but finished the book in a day out by the pool when we got back, devouring it in the way I do with books I get the opportunity to choose.

Mike Rose is a pretty big name Composition scholar - he's the editor and/or writer of countless highly regarded books, scholarly articles and has been in the field since he was about my age, which is really cool. I knew that going in...but what I didn't know is that he'd be an incredible narrative writer - full of zest and life, admission, confession, description and most of all, honesty. He's been through a handful of various education fads along the way, he's taught writing in just about every educational environment one can imagine and most importantly, like me, he knows what it's like to be remedial. Rose was placed in the "dumb" classes due to an administrative mistake during elementary school and while he wasn't a "dumb" kid, he soon learned helplessness to fit in with his peers. A few years later someone realized the mistake at the school and he was catapulted into the "advanced" classes...leaving Rose with a lot of say about both worlds and what the tightrope walking between classifications did to him, not only as a student, but as a person and most importantly, as a teacher. I was always in below-average Math classes and after dropping out of high school and getting my GED, attending BCC meant enrolling in not one but TWO non-credit remedial math courses (not to mention failing my first for-credit math course). While it's hardly much compared to Rose, I understood where he was and what it looked like from those windows. Also like Rose, the innate knowledge of not being good at something that was expected of me to advance (math) plays into the respect and understanding I give my students who struggle with the same shortcoming/notions in regard to writing.

This book surprised the hell out of me; never before have I seen a scholar mix genres - narrative and research, poetry and scholarly literature, personal essay and panel-worthy summations - in such a beautifully fluid way. When I teach 1102 again, I'm going to assign this book, not only as a great introduction to literacy and the current climate of education but also an example of what astounding writing looks like from both creative and professional audiences.

I recommend this book to anyone who teachers anything, especially public school and college...as well as anyone who is interested in reading about what life was like for a young boy who lived on a street in the poor part of LA where hope was not a neighbor. Beyond anything related to pedagogy, it's wonderfully detailed tale of how where you come from not only creates you, but informs you - for better and for worse...and how the world sees you plays a bigger role in your outcomes in life than most of us probably want to admit.