Book of the Day

Just yesterday, I recommended Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty to a former student and now fellow grad student (hmm, when your students become your peers, maybe it's time to graduate already?) Payne's extraordinary book is aimed at middle-class teachers to understand that poverty is much more than a lack of money, but I think the book does an extraordinary job of understanding the choices people, and not just those in poverty, make based on the resources at their disposal. I'm a strong believer that people are shaped by environmental cues, and this book helps remind me that people's behavior isn't always an indication of a rational choice, but often a function of learned behaviors (in the book, Payne talks about the "rules of being poor", but you could extend this to just about any situation)