In the story "I just wanna be average" by Mike Rose, he tells about his experience through high school education and everything that went with it. Rose started off high school in the "vocational track", kids that the system places in this track have written them off but as Rose proves this system can be tremendously wrong on who they place into these classes. Rose ended up being successful thanks to the help of his English teacher, Mr. Macfarland, who inspired him to care about school, his school work, and to graduate and go on to college where he published poetry, scholarly research, a textbook, and two widely appreciated books about education in America and became a professor in the School of Education at UCLA. The purpose Rose is trying to make is if there were more inspiring teachers in high school today, maybe then students would want to stay in school and reach their full potential instead of being put in vocational track classes and being written off when most show unrealized potential and this is the problem amongst other reasons too that Rose specifies with using rhetorical tools like structure, personal stories leading to pathos, imagery, diction, and tone on why the school system allows students to fail, in place of inspiring and helping students.
The structure of this story is organized by the author, being Rose, telling different stories that go in order throughout his high school career at Our Lady Mercy and it starts off by Mike telling us how he got put into the vocational track at his school. Mike Rose got confused with another student with the same last name as him at his school and that leads him to being put into the vocational track classes. Rose defines this track, "The vocational track, however, is most often a place for those who are just not making it, a dumping ground for the disaffected" (Rose, 185). Rose ends his story as a senior telling all he has learned from an English teacher, Mr.
