The post title was the title of the in-service program I attended today. It was given as a Professional Development opportunity for faculty and staff at Scribner Middle School, the very same middle school I attended.

First impressions were that it went well, the audience was very attentive. I served on a panel of immigrants. Two of us (I'll leave out names for privacy purposes) were or are students currently living in New Albany, IN. The other six panelists were actually parents of current students at Scribner.

All the stories were interesting and touch upon issues that are finally being studied by the new discipline of bi-cultural psychology (not that anyone acknowlegded that so much as I've done my own research and the issues ARE issue that are points of reserach).

I mostly spent my time listening to the stories, questions, answers from a bit of an analytical perspective. For example, finding the similarities or differences between ethnic groups (there were several: Australian, Thai, Japanese, Taiwanese/Brazilian, Mexican, The Dominican Republic, Mexican-American, and Indian) and cultures just in the way the speakers presented themselves. Finding gender differences and even some greater geographic differences (e.g. the Japanese and Taiwanese/Brazilian parents have very similar ideas AND more similar personalities).

It was also nice to hear the perspective of parents that are in a position that my mom was in nearly 20 years ago. So much has changed, and so much is better, but it still saddens me to hear the same stories still.