“The Blind Side” is a movie based on the true events in Michael Oher’s life as he went from being homeless with no father and a mother addicted to drugs, to a star football player in the NFL. Before Oher became number 74 on the Baltimore Ravens, he had little to no schooling. However, Oher also gained support after the Tuohy family provided him with a home and an opportunity. Michael Oher and his character, as portrayed in “The Blind Side”, both struggled with education for many years before attaining a successful career.
There are similarities and differences between his character in the book and in the movie. Michael Oher was born on May 28, 1986 in Memphis Tennessee to Denise Oher and Michael Jerome Williams, whom he never met. His father was murdered when Oher was in high school and although he had his mother around, she was addicted to crack cocaine. Michael was among 13 other struggling siblings. The children didn’t live together, they were scattered about town trying to live on their own. Michael Oher was homeless, looking for couches or benches to sleep on each night.
He was also in and out of foster homes. Michael had so sense of a stable environment.. In the movie, Michael was staying with a friend, Tony Henderson. He had allowed Oher to crash on his couch for the night and decided to have him tag along while he enrolled his own son Steven at Briarcrest Christian School. This was Michael’s first step into education. Prior to this, Michael had repeated first and second grade He never had someone to push him in school, therefore he was never motivated to try. During Michael’s first nine years of education, he had attended eleven different schools.
Private Schools Public Education School
Private Schools The first position of chapter three is supportive of private schools. This position feels that private schools prevent the public schools from having a total monopoly over education by offering the community an alternative choice. This choice also produces competition with public schools for student enrollment. This position views public schools as something a student must accept ...
According to The New York Times, Oher had not even attended school for about eighteen months when he was around the age of ten. It is also said that Michael had lost transcripts and was given credit for being in class when he was not present. There were also no records of Oher attending the third grade. Steve Simpson, the principal at Briarcrest, “knew they passed kids up to the next grade because they found it too much trouble to flunk them”. However, Michael was not willing to have an education at this time. He was often not in class. One record shows that Oher was absent 46 days of a single term of his first-grade year.
According to The Ballad of Big Mike, during the 2003 football season at Briarcrest, Oher was still living with several foster families and a football teammate. Steve Simpson was the principal at Briarcrest at the time. Michael was sixteen years old with a measured IQ of 80. Simpson had not seen anyone in a single digit percentile. He had been in the public school system for 30+ years and claimed that teachers had given Michael passing grades just so they wouldn’t have to flunk him. The schools wanted to get rid of Oher. This is the reason he attended so many different schools.
His freshman year in high school, Michael played varsity football for a public high school in Memphis called Westwood. According to his transcripts, he had missed a total of fifty days during that year. However, Briarcrest was Michael’s big opportunity to head in the right direction. Tony Henderson personally phoned the principal and said he wanted him in his football program. However, since Michael’s education was not up to par, the principal had agreed to accept him if he completed a home study program. Oher was later accepting into the school but was not allowed at participate in any sports.
Jennifer Graves ran the programs for students with special needs at Briarcrest for nine years. She questioned why Michael was accepted into Briarcrest. She once said “Big Mike had no conception of what real school was about,” she says. “He’d never have his books with him, didn’t speak in class, nothing. He had no academic background, no foundation at all. ” Michael nearly failed every class and the teachers were discouraging. Even Graves said that “he was a blank slate” meaning that he had been taught nothing in the past and yet he was in the 10th grade. Oher struggled until Leigh Anne Touhy came into his life.
Year Round School Persuasive Essay
Education is the fundamental key to our everyday lives. Knowledge is what keeps our economic growth possible. We are all taught, since childhood, that learning is a way to empower one’s self, which is why our school systems are an important part of our society. Recently, a debate has emerged as whether the year round calender is better for our students than our current ten month calender ...
It wasn’t until 2004 that the Tuohy family brought him into his home. Before meeting with a tutor that the Tuohy’s provided, Michael’s GPA was a 0. 6. Leigh Anne soon took over Michael’s education completely. She would keep up with grades and encourage Michael. Leigh Anne knew that in order for Oher to play college football, he would need a 2. 65 overall GPA. She then contacted all of Michael’s teachers and asked what Oher needed to do in order to receive a B in the class. Michael still continued to struggle and this was when Leigh Anne contacted Ms. Sue Mitchell.
Miss Sue worked with Oher until he was able to raise his grades. In the movie, Miss Sue also met with Michael numerous times in order to improve his education. Miss Sue worked with Oher five nights a week for a total of twenty hours. She received no payment in return either. She sometimes got frustrated but she got attached to Michael and wanted to get him into college. Preferably Ole Miss because this is where she went to college. Due to this help, Michael managed to raise his grade point average to a 2. 05 GPA by the end of his junior year. However, in order to get into a NCAA Division 1 school, he needed to have a 2. 5. Miss Sue also worked with him to achieve this. By the end of his senior year, he had a 2. 52 GPA. In order to achieve the required GPA, Oher took a Brigham Young University course that would replace poor grades with better grades in a single summer. By the end of this course, Michael’s GPA reached over the required limit. After this, Oher started to receive scholarships from various colleges. He received offers from the University of Tennessee, Louisiana State University, Alabama, North Carolina State, Auburn University, and others. Michael finally accepted a scholarship from the University of Mississippi.
Michael started at guard then moved to left tackle. He played eleven games for Ole Miss and started ten of them. He was then selected as first team freshman All-American. He kept climbing up the ladder. His sophomore year in college he was selected as second team All-American.. According to ‘The Blind Side’: How Michael Oher Made It, after playing just three years for Ole Miss, Michael Oher became eligible for the NFL draft. However, Oher declared that he wanted to return to the University of Miami for his senior year. Oher continued to do well in his college career.
The Essay on Obstacles Michael Oher Faced To Achieve His Dreams
In the novel, The Blind Side, a young boy named Michael Oher experiences many challenges that caused him to change throughout his life. He started off as a shy, uneducated boy and later grew into an inspiring role model who went through many obstacles to achieve his main goal of becoming a football player. The novel starts off by describing Michael as a homeless boy trying to survive his life, but ...
Not only did he succeed in football, but he also made the honor roll his senior and sophomore year. Michael graduated college going into the NFL draft. He also received a degree in criminal justice. Michael Oher started off homeless with very little education. The Tuohy family provided him with an opportunity kids like him do not normally get. Oher took full advantage of this and worked hard in order to get where he is today. According to Sean Tuohy, The Movie The Blind Side is almost 100% accurate. It truly shows the struggle of Michael Oher and how he was able to obtain an education, a career, and a family.
