Thursday: Poverty, Colors and Lecturing.

I made it in to school this morning just as it was starting to pour rain, which it did most of the rest of the day. I rode my bike in, as usual, and was very close to getting soaked.

We met with Lee this morning and reviewed "Poverty." His information is based upon a book by Ruby Payne called "A Framework for Understanding Poverty." The point was that there are a number of different types of poverty besides financial, lack of relationships, lack of support, lack of spirituality, etc. We also discussed the idea that there are class rules and norms associated with the impoverished class, as well as the other classes, of course. This was pretty interesting, for the most part. It occurs to me that M., the kid that I spent the day with two Mondays ago, is likely impoverished, as he shows many of the symptoms of being from an impoverished family. This will make my case study more intestesting and focused.

We then met with Mauricio, who gave a presentation about "What are your True Colors." Please! Any google search will turn up 5-10 different analyses of personality types based upon "colors." Here is one such. So far, I have found out that that I was a Blue in one survey and a Purple in another. This system indicated that I am a Green. Whatever. It was all a bunch of bullshit if you ask me and I would rather have been doing something else.

After lunch, we all carpooled over to Webber Junior High School to meet with Mark Long, Ali's husband, a teacher there for 14 years. He gave us a lecture on giving lectures. I am reminded of the quote: "To define recursion, we must first define recursion." It was an interesting experience, though. Mark is obviously a very good speaker and teacher and kept things interesting on an otherwise dry subject. Ali followed this up with a lecture (of all things) regarding the Nuremburg Laws. Interesting, I suppose.

I then got a ride home from Stephen, which I much appreciated. He has a bicycle rack on the roof of his car, so we hauled my bike around in that fashion.