Scrybalo 1

Renee Scrybalo
Ms. Thompson
Skinny A/ Day 1
Final Draft

I Just Wanna Be Average/A Talk To Teachers

A Talk to Teachers and also I Just Wanna Be Average have many similarities, as well as
many differences. One thing that they both agree on is the corrupt school system. These
similarities and differences have a lot to do with race, this generation, and the teachers and
students.
In I Just Wanna Be Average, the speaker; Mike talks a lot about different types of
people and touches on race although it is never his main point. He mainly focuses on different
ethnicities. For example, Ted and Ken. Mike makes fun of Ted and says, He was chunky and
had a baby face and came to Our Lady of Mercy as a seasoned street fighter. Ted was quick to
laugh and he had a loud, jolly laugh, but when he got angry he'd smile a little smile, the kind
that simply raises the comer of the mouth a quarter of an inch. For those who knew, it was an
eerie signal. He does in fact judge them quite harshly, so to me he is really enforcing
stereotypes. Mike shows this in another way when he begins to tell the readers about Ken.
Mike says, And then there was Ken Harvey. Ken was good-looking in a puffy way and had a
full and oily ducktail and was a car enthusiast. . . a hodad. Hodad is a term used to talk
about someone who is into cars, music, and basically just the average stereotypical white
male. I Just Wanna Be Average focuses on the different types of student isolation and the
different types of people and their personalities. However in A Talk To Teachers it talks more
about race and how segregated everything was back then. You have to account for the day

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and age also. Back in the day, the race of certain people was more apparent than normal
stereotypes. Baldwin has a more accusatory tone rather than Mike Rose. Baldwin blames the

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teachers for a false prejudice view that they give their students. Mike and Baldwin show some
of the same qualities in how they both want to get their voice out there and state their
opinions of the way schools are being run.
Funny enough, both these documents were first out to the public in December 1963.
The 1960s were very transformative. The 1960 Civil Rights Movement is a time that African
Americans struggled for racial quality. We can interpret that most likely teachers did not treat
all the students fairly. Baldwin knows and expresses his view on how cruel reality is. He knows
how important education is in able to leading a successful life. As he talks about the
importance of great education he says, to create in a person the ability to look at the world
for himself. There is no doubt that the time periods that these documents were published
that times were rough, but people kept fighting and kept doing whatever they could to feel as
equals.
Another factor must be taken into account; however. This is the students that are
enrolled in each school and their teachers ability to each them. Each student is different
than the other. Ones ability and willingness to learn can relate to how the teacher teaches
and how well the teacher does their job. Stressful situations and teaching environments can
be directly related on how the teacher is feeling every day. Lets say a teacher has a patient,
dedicated, and hard working class. Most likely then the teacher will be in a better mood.
Then we look at the opposite; a teacher with an interrupting, noisy, and disrespectful
classroom the teacher will probably be upset and stressed out which links back to the teacher
being in a bad mood. And it is quite likely that someone of a different race could be in that
bad class, instead of the good one, and have a much worse learning experience. We see in I
Just Wanna Be Average that when Mike Rose was accidentally put in a lower level class then
he was supposed to be in. He can definitely tell the distinct differences between more

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advanced and lower classes. The students, as well as the teachers acted as though they could
care less about education.

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Although their was some main differences between these two pieces, the main stand
points were the same. Their views were the same at the end of the day that both students
and teachers need to have a better outlook on education or else on the track that schooling is
going on now, they will continue to decline.