Final Blog Reflections on Service Learning #3

3. Connection to one of our readings:

I relate two of my experiences to the Mike Rose book, Lives On The Boundary. The biggest thing I took away from that book was the idea of students being left behind by the school systems because they struggled with learning disabilities, but without one-on-one attention, they weren't able to break out of the stigma of having a learning disability or from simply being left behind because no one cared enough to pay specific attention to them. I experienced two students who were both older gentleman that I guessed had some type of learning disabilities, who had never surpassed the literacy level of a 4th grader. I could not believe that something like that could happened, but I immediately thought of the Mike Rose book and wondered if either their disabilties had been ignored and they had just been pushed through the system, or if they had also been labled as learning disabled, and no one ever cared enough to pay specific attention to them to help them become more literate and receive the individual attention they needed. They may have also experienced feelings of inadequacy that caused them to feel like they were "stupid" or "dumb" and not smart enough to learn or excel  in school. It really upsetted me to see that this continues to happen so frequently in society. I wondered how their lives may have been different if they had had a mentor/teacher that took an interest in them like Mike Rose did, and I wondered how they had gotten through their lives so far only having the limited knowledge they did. It also reminded me of Rose's book because it really hit me how important knowledge is, and how critical it is for students to learn and obtain and education to help them to reach their fullest potential and benefit society as a whole.