Deeper learning and lost digital archives

I've been sharing ideas for ways people can start and sustain volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs that help kids in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago in 1993 (and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011).

As I searched past articles for inspiration for this article, I initially was going to share an article showing work interns had done in past years to help share the ideas I launched in PDF essays and blog articles.

That brought me to an article I wrote on this blog in 2018, which I'm going to repost, with comments.

Start 2018 ---

My first line was "In this article I'm going to write about the Thinglink360 video created by Kevin Hodgson, a middle school teacher from Western Massachusetts, and more than 20 other people starting in February 2018."

However, Thinglink360 no longer is open for public viewing so the video by Kevin, and the projects I created, no longer work.  Furthermore, my link to Kevin's profile on Twitter does not work either, because Kevin deleted his Twitter account due to the actions of its owner.  He's not the only one.

Then I wrote about this cMap which I created in 2018, inspired by the project Kevin is describing.  I hope you'll follow along and see the connection.

See Interns w T/MC cMap at this link. 

I first met Kevin in 2013 as part of the Connected Learning #CLMOOC, and have grown to appreciate and value the ideas he shares on his blog. Thus, I visit often. So in early April 2018 I opened this article, which was the first of a three-part reflection under the title of "Creating a Virtual Gallery of Digital Art".

It all started about three months ago (mid February?) when Kevin got an idea. "What if the (open and university) folks dabbling in Networked Narratives (#NetNarr) together created a collaborative piece of trans-media artwork together?"

Kevin brainstormed the idea with a few other on-line friends and soon created this site as an invitation for others to join in the fun. He titled this the NetNarrAlchemyLab.

In his blog Kevin wrote, "Early on, we had a vision of an immersive virtual lab that visitors could wander around in, like a museum."  He went on "We wanted to create a "doorway" in and a "doorway" out.

Over six to eight weeks 20 people from different parts of the world (Australia, Scotland, USA, France, etc) created more than 50 projects. The project began with a group from the #NetNarr ecosystem, but soon spread to folks in the #DS106 and #clmooc groups.   

I encourage you to visit Kevin's blog and read his description of what worked, what did not, and see how he keeps drawing attention to the work he and others have been doing. 

Another change I learned about today is that Kevin has reformatted his blog. No longer does it show past articles or links to other blogs on his side bar.  

See graphic in this article

As I said, I've been engaging with the #clmooc world for five years and have shared some of these interactions using graphics and concept maps posted in more than 30 articles. 

As of December 2024 that number is up to 75.

I've watched Kevin and many others from several on-line communities connect with each other and amplify the work they are each doing via their own blog articles, Tweets and Facebook posts. The motivations for these interactions are many. For instance, if you visit this #clmooc home page you can see how such interactions have been stimulated in that group.  

Since late 2023 many of the people who I met on Twitter are now using Mastodon and BlueSky to connect and share ideas.  

Find Dan Bassill on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/tutormentor.bsky.social
Find Dan Bassill on Mastodon - https://mastodon.social/@tutormentor1, https://mastodon.garden/@tutormentor1 and @tutormentor1@mastodon.cloud

As you do you'll see a few examples of where I've tried to draw members into the work I've been doing since 1993, helping non-school tutor/mentor programs reach k-12 youth in high poverty neighborhoods.

So far, I've not found many of the Chicago tutor/mentor programs on this list on Mastodon and BlueSky. Few use Twitter any more.  Some are on Instagram. Some on Facebook. Some on LinkedIn.

That means people looking for information about programs and ways to help them are going to have a more difficult time.

I liked Kevin's description of his goal, "to create  an immersive virtual lab that visitors could wander around in, like a museum."  That's the way I think of the web library I've created, and it communicates my own goal that people come in, wander around, do some reading, then share what they see with others.

As I looked at the Thinglink360 I wanted to create something similar to show work interns have done while working with Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC between 2006 and 2015, with the goal that some of these educators would duplicate these intern efforts and for the same purposes.  Since I don't have a paid account with Thinglink (or the talent) I could not do what Kevin did, so I used my free cMapTools account and created the concept map shown above. 

Each graphic on the cMap comes from a project done by one of the many interns who work on the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC project. Below each graphic you can find one or more links that open blog articles and/or videos that show the project, or show how the project was created and how I coached the interns along the way.

As I spent time last week reviewing work interns had done to collect images and links for the cMap I was reminded again of the immense talent of the students who worked with me.  More than half came from South Korea and Hong Kong, while most of the others were from Chicago area universities.

Much of the work being done in these on-line communities focuses on "cultivating connections" and "strengthening networks".  My goal is to draw people from the non-school #tutor #mentor, youth and workforce development and anti-poverty ecosystems together in similar on-line communities...and to connect them with the people and networks I'm already following.

As participation grows I hope to recruit a few people from different places who will spend time building their own understanding of what I've been trying to do. I hope some then begin to duplicate my own 25 year history, by creating libraries of content, and recruiting students from as early as middle school to spend time reading, reflecting, hacking and re-making work that I and my interns have done, to mobilize the time, talent and dollars of more people to help kids born or living in high poverty areas get the extra adult support they need to not only move successfully through school, but to have help moving into adult lives with jobs and careers that enable them to raise their own kids in any place they choose.

In many of the links on the cMap, like this one, I show how interns created their own projects after reading PDF essays, or blog articles, that I've written.   That represents more than 1000 articles, a mountain of content and ideas, that educators and social innovators from all over the world could draw from.

Throughout this and other articles I've included #hashtags with links to Twitter.  If you open these and scroll through past Tweets, you'll open yourself to a wide network of people and ideas.  For instance, here's a Tweet Kevin posted to draw attention to one of the projects in the Alchemy Lab.

A starfish in the Alchemy Lab? Of course, if it leads to a poem by @inspirepassion. And, yes, if the poem is giffed up. We’re surfacing media in the #netnarr Alchemy Lab, and you can wander amidst the words of the shelves at any time: https://t.co/b2W1oiR53O Doors always open. pic.twitter.com/TQK5YAkfsi

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) May 26, 2018

Note:  Due to people like Kevin leaving Twitter hundreds of my past articles will have a "not found" message. Fortunately, the text still appears.

In another cMap I've been aggregating links to Twitter conversations I've been following.  My vision is that at some point in the future I could find Tweets within each of these groups, pointing to my articles and work interns have done with me in Chicago, with new visualizations, videos, articles, etc. that apply those concepts in Chicago neighborhoods, or in neighborhoods throughout the world.

I'm not sure how much value this cMap will have in the future, unless their is a dramatic reversal in ownership and operations at Twitter. 

Furthermore, while my articles focus on helping kids living in poverty connect with extra adults and learning via organized non-school programs, this graphic visualizes a wide range of complex problems that need to be concurrently addressed in Chicago and throughout the world.

The "how do we do this" needs many people's ideas and what better way to communicate those than through the type of work Kevin is describing and that I've been trying to do.

Finally, if you are re-making and hacking the ideas I share, let me know. In the lower right corner of the intern map, you'll find this map, shown below, which I'm using as another 'museum' that showcases others who are already helping share Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC ideas.

I don't find enough people writing about my work. Yet, I keep encouraging alumni and others to take ownership and carry this effort into the future. 

Share the link in the comments section or on social media. You can connect with me on many platforms. Open this page to find links to each. 

--- end 2018 article w 2024 comments ----

Thanks for reading my posts, and for sharing them with others.

If you find value in what I'm sharing please consider a gift to support my 78th birthday - see this page

Or a contribution to my annual "Fund the T/MI" campaign - see this page.

This helps me keep my library and ideas on line for another year.

Who uses Slideshare or Scribed.com?

I began creating visual essays in the late 1990s and started posting them on the www.tutormentorexchange.net website around 1999.  These were in PDF format and I had no way of knowing how many people read them, so I started putting them on Scribd.com and Slideshare.com in 2011. At that time they were to separate companies with different display formats. They have been one company for the past few years.

Each month I look at the stats and record the number of views each presentation receives. That has shrunk quite a bit over the past few years.

Here's the latest presentation that I put on Scribd.com

My 30-Year History of Reach... by Daniel F. Bassill

I created this in early 2024 and so far it's not recorded many views.

Here's one of the first presentations that I put on Slideshare. It shows the learning and networking strategy that I've piloted since 1993.

   

Tutor/Mentor Learning Network Strategy Introduction from Daniel Bassill

These are two of about 60 presentations on each platform.  Many are duplicates since I was posting on two different platforms with different display features when I started putting these on line.

So my question is, are you viewing presentations, from anyone, on these platforms?  Are you posting your own presentations on one or both of these?  Is there another platform that you post to more often?

I keep my content on Scribd and Slideshare, and updated, because I believe it only takes one person, from anywhere in the world, to view my ideas and want to embrace them and support them with time, talent and a lot of dollars.

I originally put my visual essays on this page.  It sill has many presentations that I've not shared on Scribd or Slideshare, so I encourage you to skim through the list.  

For a few years I featured the link to the Scribd and Slideshare pages, but as I began to see more advertising embedded into these sites, making them less reader friendly, I created a new page with most of my visual essays.  You can find it here.

I've also created a page with my collection of videos, created by interns who have worked for me, and by myself.  Here's one.

 

As I said earlier, it only takes one person to see these and want to use their own time, talent and dollars to share the ideas and make the strategy come alive in many cities, including Chicago.

My dream is that one day you could go to the website of a university and/or a high school, and find pages with collections of visual essays and videos, with exactly the same content and purpose as what I've created, but re-built and updated by students, volunteers and professionals.

Does such a page exist in your community? Share the link in the comments section or on social media. You can connect with me on many platforms. Open this page to find links to each. 

Thanks for reading my posts, and for sharing them with others.

If you find value in what I'm sharing please consider a gift to support my 78th birthday - see this page

Or a contribution to my annual "Fund the T/MI" campaign - see this page.

This helps me keep my library and ideas on line for another year.

What comes after the election?

We lost. America lost. What's at risk? You may have heard of Project 2025, the radical right agenda to reshape America.  This site was created by comic book artists and writers to help people better understand what's in Project 2025.  Take a look.  These are things we need to fear and fight against in the coming years.

However, there's a battle that has been going on far longer.  

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on for the past 50 years is related to economic justice. If we help kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs and careers, and support networks, that enable them to live and raise their own children where ever they want, we do much to create economic justice. 

Since 2005 I've created a library of concept maps that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.

View Mentoring Kids to Careers cMap

In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.

This is extremely important because if we don't find ways to get thousands adults who don't live in poverty personally connected to youth and families that are in high poverty areas, we'll never build the empathy, and public will, to invest in the long-term efforts I describe in posts like this.

Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid.  You can find this graphic in this PDF.

Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic.  The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems.   While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved.  Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago and use it to try to draw more consistent attention and resources to EVERY tutor/mentor program in the region, not just the most visible.  

The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.

Competing for attention.  Drawing users to library.  Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing.  Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.

Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis.  The way philanthropy works, most programs compete with each other for scarce dollars. That does not encourage collaboration. Read this "Drain the Swamp" article to see what I mean.

Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.

I find too few conversations that focus on this step.  With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this 2017 article.

I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources.  I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.

Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid.  

Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities.    This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.

These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.

Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.

When I talk about the need for "better information" read some of the articles I've posted about program design and how many programs are needed.   

This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.

T/MC map created in 2008

It is essential that maps be used to support this process. With a map leaders can focus on all areas of a city where kids need extra help. At the same time, neighborhood groups can focus on their part of the city. Many groups need to be doing this.  With a map we can add overlays that show indicators of need, existing youth tutor/mentor and learning resources, and assets (business, hospitals, faith groups, universities, etc.) who could be helping youth programs grow in different areas....because they are also invested in these areas!

I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year.  No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas.  Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city. 

However, if we could solve this problem....

A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed.  I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.

This leads to the final graphic.

It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.  However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school!  It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.

Long-term; many places

I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.

I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.  In 2017 I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?" It still applies.

Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem.  While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my library of visual essays.

Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time.  If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.

Who should take the lead? Universities.

I've been reaching out to universities for over 30 years but never had the leverage (money and clout) to motivate busy faculty members to adopt the Tutor/Mentor strategies as their own.  Here's one article and here's another that show my invitation.  Read this "Tipping Points" article to see what's possible.

I just read today how Warren Buffet is making billion dollar donations around Thanksgiving and how MacKenzie Scott has doubled her giving in response the 2024 election.  People like these could fund long-term Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies at universities in every city in the country (or the world) and ensure they share ideas and learn from each other, so they constantly improve their impact.

They don't even need to involve me! They can  motivate people to spend time reading and learning from my blog and visual essays, just by providing the money needed to fuel such efforts!

I wrote an article in 2021 about "Learning from others. Don't re-invent the wheel".  This is the thinking behind the work I've done for so long. It is the reason for my library. I hope someone with higher visibility than I have will build an even larger library, and include links to my website in it. 

Finally, I wrote this article in January 2024 showing how one person was raising money for Democratic candidates throughout the country.  This is an example that could be duplicated to support youth serving programs in multiple locations.  This is another project that a billionaire could easily fund.

In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me. You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Thanks for reading. I know this is a long article and the links take you deeper and deeper. So don't try to read it all in one day. Make it part of on-going learning.  

Or make it a learning competition, as I describe on this page. You don't even need to be a billionaire to fund this!

I've been critical of Project 2025 and the billionaires behind it, but what if a few billionaires adopted the ideas in this article and supported them for the next 50 years.  This needs continuous support beyond one President.  

Can you help me do this work (and pay my bills)? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you.

Duplicate This!

Below is a video created by an intern from South Korea in 2013.

     

This is one of several visualizations created by interns between 2007 and 2015 to  help others understand strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present).

You can view more at this page.

 After you view that video, take a look at this one, which I created six years ago:

    

In this video I showed an animation created in the late 2000s by graduate students from the University of Michigan School of Information to visualize the "It takes a village" message I've been sharing often since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.

I end the video, like I end many blog articles, saying "Create your own version. You can do it better than I did. You can focus on Chicago, or on the city or state where you live."

This photos shows me surrounded by students and volunteers in 1994 as we were just forming Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. 

This type of gathering takes place in hundreds of location, in a variety of formats.  Every organization making this happen is constantly searching for dollars to support their efforts.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to help them attract those dollars, as well as ideas and volunteers that they could use to constantly get better at how they help kids.

If you create your own versions of my videos and graphics and share them often in your networks you are taking on the role that I've piloted.  Maybe you'll be a "tipping point" person, who attracts the attention and funding of a major donor like MacKenzie Scott, who funds T/MC strategies at universities in every major city, that grows new leaders to carry this strategy forward for the next few decades.

Do it!  Be like Dan!

Visit this page to search my lists of Chicago programs and find some to support.

Visit this page and make a year-end contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so I can keep posting articles like this in 2025!

How would you visualize this problem solving cycle?

I started my tutor/mentor learning journey in 1973 when I began meeting each Tuesday evening after work with a 4th grade boy who lived in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood of Chicago.  Each week I asked "What will we do tonight?"

That was a simple problem that just took a little research for me to find activity ideas.

Then in 1975 I became the volunteer leader of that Tutor/Mentor program, which grew from 100 pairs of elementary school children and workplace volunteers in 1975 to 440 kids and 550 volunteers by June 1992.  That required a much higher level of creativity and problem solving.

Then, in 1993 as we formed a new program to help 7th graders through high school, I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) to  help similar programs reach K-12 kids in every high poverty area of Chicago. This was the result of networking with Chicago program leaders since 1975 to find and share ideas for leading the one program I was responsible for.   

That local-global strategy is visualized below and has required a much broader level of thinking than just being a mentor, or leading a single program.

If you read my past blog articles, and newsletters in my archives, you'll see a constant learning and brainstorming process, centered on "How can I do this better?"

I've created a variety of concept maps and visualizations over the past 20 years to illustrate how the on-going cycle of solving a problem leads to more and more complexity as many related problems are discovered.

I'm showing some below:

While my goal in 1973 was to provide some extra tutoring support to the boy I was working with, I was not thinking of what it would take for him to move from 4th grade, through high school, then college, and a career. (By the way, we're still connected. He has two boys who have graduated from college!).

That thinking grew over the 1973 to 1993 period and was visualized in the 1990s with the "Mentoring Kids to Careers" graphic shown below.  However, my constant learning, has led me to understand that there are many barriers that kids and families living in areas of high poverty face, especially if they are people-of-color, or have ancestors who were slaves for many generations.

The right side of this visual shows some of these problems. I created this using cMapTools.  However, below I point to some systems thinking articles from this blog, which show other tools and a collaborative process of creating visualizations like mine.  

Open map at this link  View in this article

If we want to help kids move from school to careers is the title of this concept map. It shows a progression of thinking, which begins when an event calls attention to a problem that needs to be solved.   I show the "logic model" that guides my work and how trying to help one youth, or one program, leads to other problems that need to be solved.

This graphic includes the concept map shown above, and illustrates how thinking about a single program, and a city full of great programs, leads to thinking about many other problems facing Chicago and the world. (click to enlarge)

I majored in History in college, then served for three years in the US Army, learning to use maps and best available information to support decisions.  I've applied that thinking, and GIS maps, since 1993. 

This concept map shows a planning process, focused on filling geographic areas with needed, on-going support, that should be in place in every part of the country.  Links on the concept maps go to articles that explain the various elements shown on the map. 

What are all the things
that we need to do?

For the past 30 years I've spent time almost every day calling attention to the challenges kids living in high poverty face and the roles that organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs can play in helping them overcome those challenges as they move through school and into adult lives.

I point to a list of Chicago programs where people can volunteer time, talent and dollars and to a web library where anyone can learn more about the issues and ways to get involved.

Chicago Sun Times 1996

I have done this while there has been a constant flow of stories like the one at the left, showing the agony of violence in Chicago, and asking "When will this end?"  The story at the right was from the 1990s, so we still have not found an answer to that question.

I don't believe any single, short-term, action of a tutor/mentor program can make street violence stop, or make poverty suddenly disappear.  However, I do believe that the continuous on-going support of volunteers and staff in well organized programs can help kids who are part of those programs move more safely through school and into lives beyond the immediate grasps of violence that primarily affects high poverty neighborhoods.

They can also create a much larger network of adults willing to give time, talent, dollars and votes to building needed systems in every city and state.  

That's why many leaders need to be duplicating what I've been doing. 

Thanks for reading this article. I know it's a lot to think about, and the links take you deeper and deeper into my library.  Because of the time involved I keep searching for universities who will add my library and archives into an on-going learning program, that reaches below the university level, to K-12 schools, then extends beyond college, to life-long learning.

If that were happening some day you'd find web pages on university websites that share versions of my graphics, maps and concept maps, updated and improved, by student learners.   

There are literally hundreds of other articles you could read to expand your thinking on this topic.  However,  you'll want to read articles like these that show other tools for visualizing complex problems. Or like this, that focus on habits of deeper learning. 

Take this role.  Be the YOU in this graphic. Read this article about "Poverty in America" and view the learning steps that I've shared since the late 2000s.

Read and share. Do it over, and over. Create your own interpretations. Share them in your own blog or videos.

If you find sites where people are doing a good job of visualizing the problems we face along with solution paths, please share the links in the comment section or on LinkedIn, BlueSky, or other social media platforms where you can find me @tutormentorteam.  Visit this page to find links.

I've been ending my articles with a request for financial support of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Click here if you'd like to help.

Support youth tutor/mentor programs

The year-end holidays are a major fund-raising period for all nonprofit organizations, including those who work with youth.  I encourage you to use my lists to find Chicago tutor, mentor and learning programs and similar programs in other cities.

This shows part of the home page of the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net website.  The top link is to my list of Chicago area volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning program.  Open the link then search for programs based on what part of the city they operate in. Some have multiple locations so that is a separate list.

The second list shows additional youth-serving programs in the Chicago region, based on arts, STEM, service learning, etc.  It also has lists for programs and networks beyond Chicago.

Further down you can see lists for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.  Use these to find Chicago area programs on these social media platforms.  Not all programs post on social media, and only a few post on multiple platforms.

However, if you follow these programs you can get more reminders of who they are and what they do than by just visiting their websites.

#Giving Tuesday is an international day of fund raising. This year it will be on December 3rd.  Watch for posts from many youth serving programs and support as many as you can.  For the past few years I've been making small donations to 6-8 programs.  I wish I could do more.

Visit this site to learn more about #Giving Tuesday

I sent my November 2024 eMail newsletter today. You can read it on the T/MI website at this link.

I included the images below announcing my annual December 19th birthday campaign and my year-end general fund raising campaign.  

I've never charged any of the youth programs in my library for listing them and boosting their posts to try to help them attract needed volunteers and donors.  I've depended on people who value the intermediary role of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993 - present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) to provide the dollars needed.

Dan's 78th Birthday - click here

Fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC - click here

I hope you'll help me, and youth serving programs in your area.

Thank you.

Find me on Instagram, BlueSky, LinkedIn and Facebook.  I still have an account on Twitter, but I'm using it less. This page has links to my social media pages. 

Veterans Day 2024

Tomorrow the nation will once again celebrate Veterans Day. With this week's election of Donald Trump, I wonder how much meaning this holiday has, or what memory people will have 20 or 40 years from now.

On Friday I posted an article titled "Tips for Deeper Learning".  I hope over the coming year you'll find time to read it and other articles about "learning" that I've posted on this blog in the past 19 years.

This blog and my library are a resource for that learning.  I hope they are still available after my life ends.

When I attended meetings, conferences, etc. in the past I constantly took notes on what I was hearing. I was also visualizing how what I was hearing fits with my own efforts, questions I have about what's being said, and opportunities for the future. I amassed over 20 years of files and binders with these notes. 

Since 2019 I've digitized all of my notes and put them on my Google Drive. Now you can see many ideas from the past in folders here, here and here.

Often I converted some of my ideas into new graphics, and blog articles. You can see an example here.

Here's an example of my process. I scanned my raw notes into a PDF and uploaded them to my GoogleDrive. You can see them here. If you view these, you'll see on page one, a graphic similar to the one at the left. I see the role of the organizers and partners in meetings I attend and in on-line forums, as intermediaries who are trying to connect people who can help with veterans, and places who are helping veterans and their families.

If that's the case, creating a structure similar to what I've been building, which I describe below, would support their efforts.

Tutor/Mentor Institute - Learning Network Strategy by Daniel F. Bassill

This PDF describes this graphic.

If you read the article about Deeper Learning, and look at this PDF, you'll see how my library supports the concepts of "unfurling" and "unflattening" and the "adjacent possible."
 

I hope you'll also see how my graphics are a way of visualizing my thinking that others could duplicate.

Since this is Veterans Day, I feel many would relate to this graphic, and the problem solving strategy it visualizes. Visit this page and see how an intern created a video to share these ideas. Youth working with veterans could be helping communicate their own ideas and strategies.

Step 7 focuses on building public commitment to generate long term support for efforts that are distributed across many organizations, in many places, for many years. 

Resisting the fascist goals of the next Trump administration and the far right networks that support him will require this long-term commitment. It won't be easy.

Building well-organized K-12 youth serving organizations that reach kids in every high poverty area of Chicago has been my goal since 1993. It's never been easy.  It's still not been achieved.

If others do their own Deeper Learning and visualize and share their ideas, as I have, maybe we could get closer to the goal in another 10 to 20 years.  

 This article on network building emphasizes how much the veterans' community, women's rights, racial justice, minorities and others, such as the tutor/mentor community, need to build growing support for their efforts. The 40 people in the room for a ZOOM meeting I attended this week, represented thousands of total supporters. The 60,000+ visitors to my blog each month represent many thousands more.

Imagine 100, or 1000, people writing blogs with the same content, spread over 100 cities. 

I share my blog posts and graphics on social media and in my email newsletter and hope that others who read this article will want to help me in my efforts, and help the veterans community in what I feel is an equally important effort.

I've used this graphic often to show how communities need to support youth living in high poverty, or without enough family support, as they move from birth to adult lives and careers. I feel that if the veterans' community were to embrace this they could be building networks of support for youth before they enter the military that would already be in place as they leave their service.

I look forward to sharing my ideas and helping the veterans community because they will be helping me in my efforts if they adopt these ideas.

Thanks for reading.  Please connect with me on one of the social media platforms that I point to on this page.

And, if you value what I'm sharing, please make a contribution to help me keep doing this work. Visit this page and help fund the T/MI.