Happenings in My Classroom

This week we read in our Weekly Reader an article about 1 year later in Haiti. It spoke about the cholera outbreak and the fact that we, the United States, said we would give them 1.15 billion dollars in aid back in March and Haiti hasn't seen any of it because we are worried about corrupt officials. I had to explain to the kids about both cholera (highly contagious disease that you get when you eat contaminated food or drink contaminated water) and being corrupt (dishonest), so that they would understand what they meant.
As we continued reading, one of my students raised his hand and told me that his dad was corrupt. I asked him to explain how and why his dad was corrupt. He went on to explain that they have a crazy neighbor that has done some crazy things and that the crazy neighbor came over and asked the student's dad to use his car. The student's dad proceeded to tell him no and that he was in the FBI, so he needed to leave him and his family alone. And that is why he was corrupt.
I told the student that was more dishonest than being corrupt and then I gave the class an example about how if I was the president of the country and I had money that was supposed to go to everyone and I just shared it with my best friends and then told everyone else there was no money, that would be corrupt. They all just kind of shook their heads...

UPDATE: just looked up the real definition and found that Weekly Reader left out a bit-o-info. Corrupt is dishonesty resulting in financial or personal gain, not just dishonesty! No wonder it didn't make sense!