Books like Lives on the boundary by Mike Rose

A memoir of a woman who overcomes a strict survivalist Mormon upbringing in rural Idaho to pursue higher education, ultimately earning a PhD in history at Cambridge.

What the Best College Teachers Do distills fifteen years of research into the core of effective higher‑education teaching: deep subject mastery paired with a commitment to student learning and the ability to inspire curiosity and challenge.

Teaching to Transgress argues that true education is a practice of freedom, urging teachers to empower students to challenge racial, sexual, and class boundaries.

A compelling guide for teachers aiming to reconnect with their calling and passion for educating.

"It's a statistic that's sure to surprise: close to 45 percent of postsecondary students in the United States today do not enroll in college directly out of high school and many attend part-time. Following a tradition of self-improvement as old as the Republic, the "nontraditional" college student is becoming the norm. Back to School is the first book to look at the schools that serve a growing population of "second-chancers," exploring what higher education-in the fullest sense of the term-can offer our rapidly changing society and why it is so critical to support the institutions that make it possible for millions of Americans to better their lot in life. In the anecdotal style of his bestselling Possible Lives, Rose crafts rich and moving vignettes of people in tough circumstances who find their way; who get a second . . . or third . . . or even fourth chance; and who, in a surprising number of cases, reinvent themselves as educated, engaged citizens. Rose reminds us that our nation's economic and civic future rests heavily on the health of the institutions that serve millions of everyday people-not simply the top twenty universities in U.S. News and World Report-and paints a vivid picture of the community colleges and adult education programs that give so many a shot at reaching their aspirations"--

If asked to identify which children rank lowest in relation to national educational norms, have higher school dropout and absence rates, and more commonly experience learning problems, few of us would know the answer: white, urban Appalachian children. These are the children and grandchildren of Appalachian families who migrated to northern cities in the 1950s to look for work. They make up this largely "invisible" urban group, a minority that represents a significant portion of the urban poor. Literacy researchers have rarely studied urban Appalachians, yet, as Victoria Purcell-Gates demonstrates in Other People's Words, their often severe literacy problems provide a unique perspective on literacy and the relationship between print and culture. A compelling case study details the author's work with one such family. The parents, who attended school off and on through the seventh grade, are unable to use public transportation, shop easily, or understand the homework their elementary-school-age son brings home because neither of them can read. But the family is not so much illiterate as low literate - the world they inhabit is an oral one, their heritage one where print had no inherent use and no inherent meaning. They have as much to learn about the culture of literacy as about written language itself. Purcell-Gates shows how access to literacy has been blocked by a confluence of factors: negative cultural stereotypes, cultural and linguistic elitism, and pedagogical obtuseness. She calls for the recruitment and training of "proactive" teachers who can assess and encourage children's progress and outlines specific intervention strategies.

Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a "minority student" who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation -- from his past, his parents, his culture -- and so describes the high price of "making it" in middle-class America. Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language ... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.From the Paperback edition.