Lives On The Boundary

A fellow student at Mercy High, Tommy’s placement test scores are accidentally switched with Mike’s because they have the same last name. (They are not related.) While Mike was not a stellar student, Tommy’s results were much worse. This confusion lands Mike in his school’s vocational educational program, where he stays for two years before the mix-up is discovered. By the time Mike is moved back into a regular classroom, the damage has been done—he has large gaps in his education that leave him struggling through high school and his first years at Loyola Marymount University. Although Tommy only appears for a short time in the book, the test mix-up is perhaps the most pivotal moment of Mike’s life. It sets him behind in school, but his struggles in vocational education are also what inspire him to become an advocate for remedial students later in life.

Jack MacFarland joins Our Lady of Mercy High as an English teacher, and he quickly becomes Rose’s favorite instructor. MacFarland has a master’s degree from Columbia, and he ends up in a private school because he “couldn’t bear” to take credentialing courses (32). MacFarland was a beatnik and an intellectual, and he expected all of his students—including his vocational ones—to read and think about literature. MacFarland rekindles Rose’s love for literature, and he inspires Rose to put in effort for the first time in his high school career. For his part, MacFarland recognizes Rose’s potential, and he leverages his connections to help Rose—who’s grades “stank,” by Rose’s own admission—to get into LMU (34).

MacFarland serves as a critical figure in Rose’s life. On a practical level, Rose likely would have never left South Vermont had he not ended up in MacFarland’s class. Rose only ends up in college because MacFarland invests in him as both a person and a student; he encourages Rose and guides him through school while helping to set him on a path for success. This is particularly powerful for Rose at this point in his life since he has just lost his father, and in many ways, MacFarland becomes a sort of father-figure for Rose when he needs it most. But MacFarland also becomes Rose’s blueprint for what great teachers should be: involved, caring, smart, and encouraging. MacFarland becomes one of the models for Rose’s own teaching philosophy as he embarks on his own teaching career.

Rose’s father—whom he never refers to by name—is an immigrant from Italy who, after marrying Rose’s mother, opens an Italian restaurant in Pennsylvania. When the railroad company goes bust, Rose’s father moves his family to California in the hope of finding a better life. What the family finds, however, is poverty and struggle. They end up settling in South Vermont, an area of South Los Angeles, and exist in a continual state of financial precariousness. Unfortunately, Rose’s father’s suffers from poor health, so outside of “poker and pinochle,” he cannot hold steady work (12). Despite his illness, Rose has fond memories of his father. But his father’s health continues to deteriorate, and Rose’s father passes away during Rose’s junior year in high school.

Although Rose shares intimate details of his life with readers, he does not often address the impact of his father’s death. He tells readers that the last months of his father’s life saw a “diminishing of his body and spirit,” and he avoids talking about his grief (32). But Rose’s father clearly influences Rose’s life and decisions positively, which readers see when Rose decides to relinquish his fellowship at UCLA. When Rose gets home from the registrar’s office, he lies in bed and apologizes to his father, saying “‘Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry’” (83). This passage shows how despite his father’s absence, Rose’s father still serves as a figurative compass for Rose. Although Rose knows he has made the right decision in leaving UCLA, this raw moment also reveals Rose’s concern that he has somehow disappointed his father, or at least disrespected his wishes. Rose’s father remains such an important figure in Rose’s life that he dedicates Lives on the Boundary to his memory.

Like Rose’s father, Rose’s mother is a) an Italian immigrant and) never referred to by name. She worked in a garment factory in Pennsylvania until she married Rose’s father, then she works in their family restaurant until it goes under. Once the family moves to Los Angeles, Rose’s mother starts off working at a café downtown, but she soon moves to a more lucrative position working nights at a coffee shop named Coffee Dan’s. In many ways, Rose is even less transparent about his mother than his father. Rose is never clear about why, but readers infer this is likely due to her position as the family’s sole breadwinner. Rose tells readers that she had to work nights, and even once she was promoted to day shift, much of her time was spent traveling to and from her job by bus. Rose do essay that his family’s precarious financial position makes him a vulnerable student, and when Rose ends up in vocational education, his parents are unable to help. After all, “[W]hat sort of pressure could an exhausted waitress apply” to a system that had already written Rose off? (24).

Don Johnson is a young teacher who taught philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and becomes one of Rose’s academic mentors. Johnson’s courses are known for being difficult, and he assigns texts like The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, which Rose struggles to understand. Johnson takes the time to help Rose develop the “ability to read difficult texts,” which in turn gives Rose the confidence he needs to succeed at Loyola (51).

When Rose’s father’s health deteriorates to the point that he needs constant care, the family turns to Lou Minton for help. Rose describes Minton as a “wiry man with gaunt, chiseled features and prematurely gray hair” who had gone to college for a few years before winding up in Los Angeles (23). Minton was alone, and after meeting Rose’s mother at Coffee Dan’s, becomes part of the family. He made money by doing odd jobs around the South Vermont neighborhood, and after Rose’s father takes a turn for the worse, Minton becomes his caretaker. After Rose’s father dies, Minton remains a close member of the family. Unfortunately, Minton’s life takes a tragic turn one evening. Rose is away at college, and he gets an emergency phone call from his mother. He returns home to find her hysterical in the kitchen; Rose runs to the bedroom to see that Minton has killed himself with a pistol. For Rose, Minton’s death serves to represent the sadness and “the personal as well as public oppressiveness of life in South Los Angeles” (46). Minton’s suicide becomes one of Rose’s major motivations to succeed in college and leave South Vermont behind.

Dr. Frank Carothers is another of Rose’s mentors at Loyola. He is the chair of the English department during Rose’s freshman year, and he teaches courses and runs the English Society as well. Rose describes Carothers as a professor who “enjoyed the classroom, and he seemed to love the informal contacts with those he taught” (52). In other words, Carothers takes a deep interest in his students, which is why he agrees to help the Mercy High boys catch up in college at MacFarland’s request. What Rose realizes in retrospect is that Carothers’s willingness to help Rose is both unusual and “exceptional,” especially by today’s standards (46). Like MacFarland, Carothers influences Rose’s teaching philosophy. Carothers serves as an example of someone who considers teaching a “profoundly social calling,” and he combines academics with strong interpersonal relationships to help his students succeed (52).

The third of Rose’s mentors at Loyola, Dr. Ted Erlandson teaches literature at Loyola. He also agrees to teach a special seminar for MacFarland’s Mercy High students to help them improve their reading, thinking, and writing skills. But instead of drilling Rose and his friends in grammar rules, he helps them learn more organically by teaching them how to wrap their heads around academic language. He patiently helps Rose hear—rather than read—what he writes, and he trains Rose’s ear to recognize errors in his own writing. Rose explains that Erlandson’s “linguistic parenting felt just right: a modeling of grace until it all slowly, slowly began to work itself into the way I shaped language” (55-56). Erlandson’s class helps Rose realize the importance of language, and how language often equates to access. By learning how to write academically, Rose gains access into academia; once he becomes a member of the club, so to speak, he starts to find success. Rose takes what he learns about language in Erlandson’s seminar and makes it the backbone of his teaching strategy.

Father Clint Albertson is the last of Rose’s Loyola mentors. He is the school’s Shakespeare professor who MacFarland said would “knock [Rose’s] socks off” (56). His course shows Rose how to make connections between Shakespeare and other disciplines like art, history, and theater, and he teaches Rose how to combine sources to understand literature. Albertson teaches Rose the skills he needs to engage with the things he reads academically. Like Erlandson, he also hands Rose and his fellow classmates the keys to the educational kingdom. Rose tells readers that “[w]hat Father Albertson did was bring us inside the circle, nudging us out into the chatter, always just behind us, whispering to try this step, then this one, encouraging us to feel the moves for ourselves” (58). Albertson—along with Carothers, Erlandson, and Johnson—lift Rose out of his cycle of academic struggle and place him on the path to academic success.

When Rose goes to El Monte as a member of the Teacher Corps, he finds himself working with three fellow interns. They work as individuals and as a team, and their goal is to help struggling students in two El Monte elementary schools. Lillian, Joe, and Monica spend most of their time together, and their group dinners provide Rose a way to get feedback on the issues he faces with his remedial reading students. Additionally, Lillian, Joe, and Monica are Mexican American, and they serve as cultural liaisons between Rose and the largely Hispanic El Monte community.

Ben Campos is Rose’s Teacher Corps supervisor, a “seasoned teacher,” and a long-time resident of El Monte (86). Because Ben has spent so much time in the El Monte community, he is dialed into the needs of the people who live there. He also knows the intimate details of how poverty affects families when he reveals to Rose that members of his extended family are drug addicts. Campos’s love for El Monte gives him “the kind of binocular vision [Rose] needed so badly,” and he understands that community programs are key to helping elementary students with their long-term outcomes (129). That is why Campos works to provide opportunities for The Teacher Corps interns that one would “never find in the traditional [educational]school bill of fare” (129). That includes the chance to teach adult learners in a free English as a Second Language (ESL) course that is open to the community. Campos shows Rose the importance of a holistic approach to education that takes the community’s issues and needs into account, too.

Rosalie Naumann is an El Monte elementary school teacher and her school’s reading specialist. She is tasked with bringing the school’s worst readers up to speed, and she does so with kindness, attentiveness, and individualized attention and her “kids loved her” for it (92). When Rose hears about Naumann’s philosophy and sees her success, he asks Campos to assign him to her classroom. Rose is not supposed to teach without supervision—he does not have the appropriate credentials—but Naumann secures a special waiver from the principal that allows him to help her worst readers and writers once a week. Naumann gives Rose his first taste of teaching, which sets him down a career path that will define the rest of his life.

Rose’s El Monte elementary students are a group of fifteen fourth- and fifth-graders identified as the poorest readers in the school. When Naumann, Rose’s mentor, first gives him the assignment to improve their reading, Rose is overwhelmed. She encourages him, telling him to just “do something” with them, since “their lives are pretty dreary” (93). Rose takes Naumann’s advice, and he decides to guide his students through a curriculum that does not punish errors and instead encourages imagination and effort by asking students to write about themselves or about pictures out of magazines, and celebrates their achievements by putting their writing in a book. What Rose learns, however, is that his students’ home lives are more than dreary: they are often filled with serious struggles ranging from poverty to violence.

Harold Morton is a fifth grader and member of Rose’s remedial reading and writing class. When Rose first meets Morton, he is immediately struck by the boy’s silence and physical tics; Morton’s eyes are “twitching” constantly and he refuses to make eye contact (115). And yet, Rose feels drawn to Morton, and makes excuses to spend time with his new student. As Morton begins to open up, Rose realizes that his tics begin to subside and his writing starts to improve. Eventually, Rose decides to visit Morton’s mother at home, where he finds out that the family lives in poverty and has been abandoned by Morton’s father.

Morton’s mother tells Rose that her son has struggled with his father’s absence, and Rose realizes that Morton’s struggles are the result of neglect and loneliness. He has been placed in remedial classes because of his behavioral tics, even though his IQ and aptitude tests reveal he can be a capable student. But the labels assigned to him—“remedial,” and in need of “medical” and “psychological” intervention—follow him through school (124-25). The powers that be deem him too far gone for “remediation,” even though Morton’s problem comes from neglect at home and in school, not from a lack of intelligence. Perhaps more importantly, Rose recognizes that Morton’s father’s absence has a profound effect on the young boy. Rose tells readers that “Harold was made stupid by his longing” for his father, and “his folder full of tests could never reveal that” (127). But Rose only comes to this conclusion through hard work, interest, and the willingness to evaluate Morton’s life as a whole. The classroom does not reveal his whole story, and Morton serves as argument for Rose’s belief that the education system must address the social issues that plague marginal students, too.

When Rose’s time with the Teacher Corps ends, he joins the staff at the Veteran’s Program, which aims to help military veterans transition into college. His students are adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who hope to transition out of the military by getting a degree. Many of Rose’s students are combat veterans, and they bear the scars of their tours of duty inside and out. More importantly, Rose learns that many of his students were vocational learners in school, and they share similar struggles to his El Monte elementary students. Namely, they have been labeled “below average” in some way, and Rose must instill confidence in his students before they can improve as writers. Rose works hard to create assignments that teach what he believes to be the four key skills to succeed in college: “summarizing, classifying, comparison, and analyzing” (138). As he gets to know his students better, Rose also realizes that they all believe in the transforming power of education despite having been left behind by that same system as children. Ultimately, what Rose learns from his veterans is that remedial learners all have similar needs: they need to feel capable, be taught in a way they understand, and have any compounding issues (like poverty or mental illness) addressed. In the end, Rose says his time working with veterans taught him “a lot about learning—how to foster it, what impedes it,” and it reinforces his belief that vocational learners are full of unrecognized potential (164).

Rose first meets Chip Anderson when Anderson hires Rose to work at the Veteran’s Program. Anderson leaves to join the staff at UCLA and reaches out to Rose about a job opportunity in the school’s Tutorial Center. Rose accepts, and he and Anderson work together to run the program, which works to help students from low-income, minority, and other at-risk backgrounds. While working with Anderson, Rose comes to understand just how politicized the issues surrounding remedial students are, even on the university level. He and Anderson fight to keep the Tutorial Center alive, especially in the face of budget cuts and disinterest from faculty and administration.

Rose shares the story of Concepción Baca as an example of one of Rose’s students who, through guidance and help, succeeds. Baca had participated in one of Rose’s summer programs aimed at helping bring vocational learners up to speed and help them prepare for college. Baca had attended UCLA for two years before dropping out, partly because of her grades and partly because she struggles to live away from home. After working for a few years, she returns to a different University of California campus, where she excels in Comparative Literature courses. She is now a graduate student in comparative literature and “one of the best writing teachers” at her university (203). Rose includes her story to show readers how easy it can be to write students off for poor performance who would otherwise succeed if their situations were slightly improved. He imagines that the summer course has her listed as one of its “failures,” when in fact, she becomes one of its success stories. Rose shows readers that the payoff for investing in remedial students is rarely immediate, but no less impactful.

Millie is a participant in a Bay Area literacy program, and her testing scores put her solidly in the class average. Rose uses her to show readers why standardized testing is a poor indicator of aptitude. Millie initially struggles to understand what word prefixes mean. She guesses prefixes like un- in “unhappy” mean sad based on the word itself, which Rose points out is a logical—and actually pretty intuitive—mistake to make. But once Rose helps Millie figure out the “trick” of those sorts of questions, she starts getting every answer right. Through Millie, Rose shows how people’s focus on what remedial students cannot do keeps them from seeing their true intelligence.