Relative to the first class

Glassman you'll find it exciting to know that I reflect upon Sen quite often now! Anyhow I was in my tutoring session last night and afterwards I was filling out my paperwork on the daily activities for the day. The gals that run the program always are interested in talking about the lives of these children and figure out how I handle my group because I have not only the youngest children in the program but the most at one time as well. The things that I pay particular attention to now are motivators that I have somewhat extracted from some of Sen's ideas. I look for a variety of ways to maximize the reading skills that we are working on.

That is not the reason for this post. The reason for this post was to give some incite to communities that many of us are not familiar with and really only have certain perceptions about. I was sitting with one of the leaders last night and was discussing neighborhood resources. I brought up a particular example of grocery stores and our discussion relating to resourcing of informational resources and availability of resources like grocery stores and etc. I explained the idea you brought up in class about the lack of food items and healthy food options that more privelaged communities have. She provided some interesting feedback. She told me that it makes sense because she grew up in an African American neighborhood and she recalls that her mother was never able to shop more towards the city, but rather had to use more convenient and proximal resources. She said it wasn't that they didn't have the money they didn't have the transportation to get there. Therefore, they were stuck with the only option of the one or two corner markets that were near them. She said what you often find there is old food, higher priced items, limited selections, and few fresh alternatives. For example, she said you would never find fresh salad bars like you would find at the more conventional grocery stores. She merely said those alternatives are not available to them. I found this very interesting because despite what we discuss it's difficult to really relate to this until you hear someone talk about these things from a personal experience. She said what you see then is that families are forced to have a limited number of alternatives and that this further limits the opportunities that parents can provide to their children. Just thought I would share!!!