STEM and Networks. Share These Resources.

Last week I participated in two webinars of interest. 

One was titled “State of STEM Ecosystems”. Visit this site for the video and a written summary of the ideas that were shared by panel members.

Then, visit this page on the STEM Learning Ecosystems website to view the resources they share.  

One other resource on the site that I want to draw your attention to is the map I show below. Open the link then click into any of the dots on the map and dig deep into work being done in each community in the network. It's extensive!

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you have seen how much I value the use of maps. When I look at the STEM Learning Ecosystem map I ask, “How are these communities sharing ideas across the network, and within their own cities?” I also ask, “Do they have maps/directories that point parents, volunteers and donors to STEM programs in their communities?”  Are they educating donors to use maps to find STEM and other youth development programs to support?  How are they drawing attention to their libraries? 

The second webinar was titled, “Exploring Multiscalar Networks” with June Holley. 

It was hosted by Socialroots as part of the Network Coordination Commons. 

The full video from this webinar can be found at this link.  A shorter, 30 minute summary video is at this link.  And, slides from June Holley's presentation can be found on this page.  The three images shown in the graphic above are from June's slide deck.   Here's another review of June's presentation. 

Visit June's LinkedIn page and review her history.  She's been weaving networks for more than 40 years.  She created Network Weaver in 2018 to offer Network Weavers a hub of free information and resources to support their systems change endeavors. Beginning in 2021, Leadership Learning Community has managed Network Weaver in partnership with One Sphere, Ltd. Their vision is to empower network leadership as a catalyst for racial equity and justice, driving collective liberation through interconnected networks.

I’ve followed June Holley since the mid 2000s, but we’ve never connected in support of work either of us was doing.  Maybe it's due to her focus on helping networks grow and my more narrow focus on helping economically disadvantaged youth via long-term tutor/mentor programs.  You can read some of my articles about ecosystems here.   I've only learned about the STEM Learning Ecosystem recently. 

One of the STEM webinar panel members was Dr. Stephanie Rodriguez – Director of the STEMM Opportunity Alliance. During her presentation she shared the graphic below, showing questions that need to be asked and answered in each of these communities and across the entire ecosystem.

I watched the introduction to the STEMM Opportunity Alliance in 2022 and wrote this article, showing strategies that can be used to build STEMM learning programs in more places.  The ideas are as valid now as they were then.

The facilitator of the STEM webinar, ended with this question: "What will be our legacy in 10 years?"  

I was asked a similar question in 2014 and wrote this article, showing where I hoped the tutor/mentor ecosystem would be in 5, 10 and 15 years. 

In 2014 I wrote the following. I think these goals could apply to the STEM Ecosystem, too:

* In five years, the map of the Chicago region should show a growing density of needed youth and family services in areas where they are needed. These programs should have web sites that show what they are trying to do, and what they are accomplishing, using this Shoppers Guide as a checklist. 

* In ten years, the map should show an even greater density of programs in areas of need. Web sites of programs operating in 2014 and started over the next five years, should begin to show participation history, and stories of youth and volunteers who have been part of these programs and who now are further toward graduation and jobs. Programs started between 2019 and 2025 would show the same start-up information as programs starting in the first five years. 

* In 15 years the density of programs should reach all areas of need, and web sites of programs in place now should show a number of stories about alumni who have gone through the program and who are now adults who are working, raising families, and in some cases, providing support for the growth of the programs that were part of their lives as young people. If this strategy is supported consistently for the next 15 years, by donors, volunteers, media, business, etc. we should begin to see significant changes of where poverty is concentrated because there should be less in places where well organized programs are helping youth grow up, move through school, and find jobs. 

It’s 2025.  We are not close to achieving these goals. Maybe 2040?

One of the member communities is the South Side STEM  Opportunity Learning Landscape, which I wrote about in this 2023 article.  This is the direct link to their site. 

Then, this week I saw a report titled, “INCREASING STEM ENGAGEMENT THROUGH OPPORTUNITY LANDSCAPING” (on this page)

This paper on Opportunity Landscaping, co-authored by Nichole Pinkard, with Sheena E., Caitlin K. Martin, Yolanda J. Majors, PhD, & Natasha Smith-Walker, explores how we can better understand and design learning ecosystems to ensure equitable access to STEM and out-of-school learning opportunities. An example of this work is the Chicago South Side STEM Opportunity Landscape.

This information is all related.  Ideally, each community on the STEM Learning Ecosystem map would have a similar landscaping strategy in place, and would be constantly sharing what works, what doesn't, and what help is needed with others in the network.  Ideally, networks in each STEM community would be connecting with other youth development networks in the same community. 

This may already be happening. Is it? 

The sites I point to in this article aggregate information that can be used by members of their ecosystems and networks.  June Holley's presentation asks, "How do we connect across networks, to create "networks of networks".  I keep asking the same questions.

If you read my "Why do I blog" article you'll see my 2005 article, showing my goal of  creating a blogging space that links to the T/MC web sites, so that as people talk about tutoring/mentoring, we can use maps, charts and other web links to show them where, why and how they can be involved. 

As I listened to these two webinars I ask, "Where are people sharing these ideas in on-line conversations?  

I’ve shared my ideas and website with these networks for many years, but finding a place to interact has been difficult. I’m not part of the “in group” and never have been. That’s been a challenge since I started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago in 1975 while holding a full time retail advertising job with the Montgomery Ward corporation.

I post ideas here, and share links in my library, with the goal that a few people will see them and take them into these networks.  I put links to the STEM Learning Ecosystem in this section of my library and the Network Building resources in this section. I shared these in the webinar.

They area available to anyone in the world.  

Please share these resources. Help STEM programs grow in more places and help people in more places connect with ideas they can use to solve complex problems facing this planet.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Insatragram, Facebook and even Twitter. 

Blogging4Life: Why I Started Blogging

A few of my #clmooc friends have created posts showing why they blog and invited me to add my own history.  I invite you to read posts by Kevin, Sarah and Sheri to see where I'm getting my inspiration. 

Like Kevin, I'm going to break this into a few posts, with the first one probably the longest.

Why did you start blogging in the first place? 

Creating and writing this blog, starting in April 2005, was an extension of the public awareness strategy which I’d launched in 1993 when I and six other volunteers created a new tutor/mentor program in Chicago, to serve teens in one neighborhood, and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, to help similar programs reach k-12 youth in every high poverty area of Chicago. 

Sample graphic from Tutor/Mentor blog articles

The goal of every article is visualized with the graphic shown above.  "How can we do this better?"  How do we get more people involved in helping kids in high poverty areas move safely through school and into adult lives, with jobs and careers that enable them to raise their own kids free of poverty, and from the scourge of systemic racism.

The habit of blogging has deeper roots, extending to my 17 years working in retail advertising for the Montgomery Ward retail store corporation from 1973 to 1990. Every ad we wrote was a ‘mini blog’ providing information to millions of potential customers. 

When I started leading a tutor/mentor program in 1975, as a volunteer, I created weekly newsletters to provide volunteers with ideas and tips and news about upcoming events that they were to share with their students. Each of these is an early version of what I have been trying to do with my blog articles. This link points to the April 1986 issue shown at the right.  

From 1993 to 2002 my primary communication to the world was through printed newsletters that I sent three to four times each year. In 1993 the mailing list was around 400. It grew each year and was close to 14,000 by 2003 when we stopped sending these due to rising costs and lack of funding. 

We created two versions of this. One focused on our own tutor/mentor program, as well as the T/MC. The other focused on the T/MC and other programs in Chicago and around the country, with just a small mention of our own program.

In each printed newsletter I included a “President’s Message”. That was an early form of blogging for me. At the left is the editorial from my Jan-Feb 1997 newsletter.  On this page you can find links to many of my past printed newsletters. 

We switched to weekly email newsletters in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, only a fraction of the people in our print mail database transferred over to the email list. Unless they have searched the Internet for "tutor mentor" and found my website and blogs, we've lost contact. 

As with the print newsletters, each email newsletter ended with a “President’s Message”.  You can read many of these in this section of my archive.    

By 1995 I was beginning to share ideas on Internet forums, such as the VOC-Net (Vocational Education Discussion List), Digital Divide, After School Network, SAC-List at University of Illinois, and MOTT School-Age list. I also connected on a list hosted by the Australian Student Traineeship Foundation.

Then around 2000 I started hosting planning conversations on Yahoo Groups.  My rational was that using the Internet I could reach hundreds of people every day, whereas in face-to-face meeting I might only meet with one or two people a day, at the most. 

The goal was to get more and more people involved, helping the program I was leading, and helping every other program operating in the Chicago region. My library now points to youth serving programs in all parts of the USA and many parts of the world. They all need help.

We recruited a professional public relations firm, Public Communications, Inc.,  in 1993 to help us develop the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy and implement the public awareness part of it. This led to me hosting tutor/mentor conferences every six months from May 1994 to May 2015, publishing a printed Directory of tutor/mentor programs, and organizing Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaigns each August/Sept from 1995 to 2003. 

Our PR partner fed information to the media each time we hosted an event, which resulted in numerous print, radio and TV stories. You can see many on this page.  

We launched a “Rest of the Story” strategy in 1994 to follow negative news with map-stories showing where the incident took place and any tutor/mentor programs operating in the area. Many of the articles in the Tutor/Mentor blog are part of the “Rest of the Story” strategy. Here’s an example. 

Along with this I began to write “letters to the Editor” which were often published in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and other media. I shared some of these in this article.

However, more often than not, my letters were not published. 

Volunteers from my Chicago tutor/mentor program built my first Tutor/Mentor Connection websites, in 1996, then again in 1998, which demonstrates how workplace volunteers who first begin as one-on-one tutors and mentors often go beyond, and help the program, and the students, in other ways. 

I posted my maps and information and lists of programs on those sites. I pointed to them in my on-line listserv conversations.

As I learned about blogging I saw a way to by-pass media gatekeepers who only chose to print my letters occasionally.

I felt that with a blog I could share my ideas and draw attention to the tutor/mentor program I led, and to events I was organizing, more consistently than through traditional media.

So, I launched this blog.

In my first article, published in April 2005, I wrote:

I've been taking a look at the blogging community in the past week and feel that this is a great format for creating on-going dialog about volunteering, community service, civic engagement and tutoring/mentoring. Most blogs only connect to other bloggers. I'm looking to create a blogging space that links to the T/MC web sites, so that as people talk about tutoring/mentoring, we can use maps, charts and other web links to show them where, why and how they can be involved. If we can create a space for this on a T/MC web site we can be a hub for bloggers throughout the world to connect, link, and increase awareness of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the work we do.

In a couple of months it will be the 20 year anniversary of this blog.  Over the next two weeks I'll address some of the other questions shown on Sarah, Kevin and Sherri's blogs. In the meantime, I encourage you to visit some of my past articles and use them as starting points for your own. In particular, look at the #clmooc articles to see how I've connected with this group since 2013.  They have been a tremendous source of inspiration and support.  

Thanks for reading.  I hope this encourages you to write your own blog, and use it to focus on drawing people to ideas they can use to help solve problems that need the efforts of many people, over many years.

I'm on BlueSky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I hope you'll connect and boost my posts.  

I also hope a few readers will visit this page and make contributions to help me continue to do this work. 

Blog articles as mini libraries

I've been sharing  information on two main blogs for more than 17 years.  This is the main one. The MappingforJustice blog is the second one.  Many of the articles highlight information I've been aggregating in the Tutor/Mentor library that I've been building for 50 years. 

Below is a concept map that I created several years ago to highlight some of the articles in these blogs.

These articles focus on issues like the climate crisis, income inequality, segregation, poverty, the digital divide, and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.  In each I've added additional links, as updates, over the past several years.  Thus, they serve as "mini libraries" that focus on specific topics.

Below is another concept map that shows the challenges kids, families and schools in areas of concentrated poverty face as they try to help kids from birth-to-work.

You'll notice that the issues featured in the top concept map are some of the same issues shown on the bottom map.  The goal is to create an archive that people from anywhere can use to deepen their understanding of issues, see how other people are already trying to solve those problems, then innovate solutions that might work in their own locations.

This concept map shows that planning process. 

While this information can be used to build systems of support for kids/families in areas of concentrated poverty, they also show an information-based problem-solving strategy that can be used anywhere.  

Do you have maps like this?  Please share your links.  Please share mine.

Thanks for reading.  If you'd like to help me pay the bills, please visit this page and send a contribution. 

Focus part of your attention on kids in high poverty areas

The last few months have dramatically changed the focus of most Americans, as the new administration in Washington, DC is rapidly dismantling the Federal government and the many services and protections it offers, while also destroying long-term alliances with foreign governments.  Most of my social media is dominated with this issue.

Yet, in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library I point to articles like this, focusing on wealth inequality in America, or this blog, which focuses on breaking the cycle of poverty in America.  Another article describes "How the racial wealth gap has evolved -- and why it persists".   Many articles on this blog focus on these issues. Just open the tabs at the left and scroll through past articles. 

Many of the articles in my library are from 10 to 20 years ago. They demonstrate that the problems we face now are deeply rooted, and still need solutions. 

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on is helping 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.  The graphic at the right shows to teens who were part of the tutor/mentor program I led in the 1990s. One is shown at the lower right. She's now Director of Support Services for Housing Opportunities for Women.  I'm still connected to both of these teens, and many others, nearly 30 years after we first met.

My goal is that more youth from high poverty areas have similar support systems.

I've created a library of concept maps over the past 20 years 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.

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 25 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.

That knowledge base is the web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs that I've been building since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago from 1975 to 1992. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago.  The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy we created in 1993.  

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. 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 article.  With the White House and Federal government now run by an unelected immigrant billionaire and a convicted felon, getting attention on social media for youth development issues is more difficult than ever before, especially when one has no money for advertising (that's me). 

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 all the places where they are most needed. I tried to do this through the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I help in Chicago from 1994 to 2015.  

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.

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.  

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 they move through school and into adult lives. Read more.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my collection 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.

Moving into spring 2025 the challenges are much greater.  While the nation still deals with a lingering Covid19 pandemic, bird flu, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. We now face massive layoffs of government workers and drastic reductions of Federal funding of programs that help keep us safe and help those who need extra help get that help.  These are just a few of the problems that I see as I scroll my social media feeds each day.  

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. From 2009 till now, I created lists on Twitter with accounts of many organizations in the Tutor/Mentor library, but very few of these are using social media to connect with each other, or discuss issues I address in articles like this. I'm now trying to build a similar network on BlueSky and Mastodon. 

If you're interested in learning more I urge you to read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.  The please read these articles about establishing a Tutor/Mentor Connection at one or more universities. 

I invite others to create and share their own versions of my articles, to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-based strategies in your own communities.  I'd love to help you while I'm still able.

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.

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

Protest music for these times

Last November I stumbled across The Marsh Family singers on Twitter, as they created parody songs to lambast Trump and encourage support for Kamala Harris. I've followed them since, and now find them on BlueSky, too.  This song is titled "Don't Abandon Them" talking about the war in Ukraine.  Listen to it here.
  

You can listened to more of their songs on YouTube.  I hope you'll share them with your network.

This got me thinking about other protest songs. Since I went to college in the 1960s, then the Army from 1968-71, I did a search to find some songs that had resonated with me.

This site has a list of "10 Significant Protest songs of the Viet Nam War".   This site  has a longer list, of 17 top songs. 

It included one by The Animals, titled,  "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" - 1965  click here    

I can remember many evenings when my Acacia fraternity brothers blasted out that song, as we strummed our tennis racket guitars late at night.  

Another on the list was the song by the Plastic Ono Band, titled - "Give Peace a Chance" - 1969 click here

As I thought of these songs I thought back to one that I first heard in 1970 while I was stationed in South Korea.  It was from the play "Hair", and titled "Let the Sun Shine in".   Listen to it here. 

Songs have power. We need them now, to mobilize attention and combat the negative impact of the current President, his Project 2025 backers and out-of-control billionaires. 

More than that, we need songs that mobilize attention and resources to save the planet and stop humans from destroying it and themselves.

So, what were your favorite protest and motivation songs from the past?  What about now?  Share links in the comment section and on social media.

Thanks for reading. Find me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Twitter and other social media. Find links on this page. 

Maybe someone will even create a song that draws attention to my blog articles and websites and leads to a university adopting my archives and creating a Tutor/Mentor Connection study program on their campus. 

Until then, a song that draws a few more donors to this page would help!  

Happy Valentine's Day! Spread Hope & Opportunity to All.

This photo was taken more than 30 years ago. Yet it still symbolizes what volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring is all about. These are two kids who were part of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program which I joined in 1973. I became its leader in 1975. I was the primary photographer for the next 20 years.

What's great about this photo is that is shows the "love" that was represented in this program, and can still be found among alumni of the programs I led and in photos I see on websites of other volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other places.

It's love that connects kids living in poverty with adults who don't live in poverty.

 

It's Valentine's Day, so I'm pointing to these graphics which were created by two interns from South Korea during a a seven week internship in 2012.  I wrote about it and included a link to the animation in this article.

This article from the DePaul University Center for Writing-Based Learning includes its own message of Love.  Another article, by Simon Ensor, a professor in France, communicates the same idea and points to ideas I've been sharing at this Tutor/Mentor blog.

Here's another graphic, also created by the 2012 intern team. Song Me Lee wrote this article, to show how the graphic was created, and to show what she'd been learning during her internship.  I encourage you to look at all of the messages posted by Song Me during her internship.  

On this page of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site I post a list of interns from 2006 till 2015, with links to articles they wrote to introduce themselves at the start of their internship, and then links to final reflection articles.  Some provide more information than others, but all show an intent that the intern learn new ideas and new skills from working on their projects.

As I've interviewed students for these internships I've emphasized that one of my goals is that these students continue to stay connected to the Tutor/Mentor Connection library of ideas and to each other, so that in future years they become a community of people who help each other, and who apply these ideas to making the world a better place.

In many of my articles I've encouraged universities to establish a "Tutor/Mentor Connection" so more students are looking at my archives they way interns did who worked with me in past years.

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

 

I created this presentation to show a goal of having student-led Tutor/Mentor Connection-type teams growing on high school and college campuses throughout the US and the world.  Anyone who takes a few moments to view my blogs and then shares what I'm writing about, as Simon Ensor has done on his blog, is providing inspiration and motivation for one or many people to take this roll.

I'm still waiting for the first university or high school to adopt this strategy, and for the first corporation or benefactor to endow it with 10 years of funding, but as they say "Rome was not built in a day."   

I created this concept map to illustrate this vision. If you start writing about my ideas and/or creating your own visualizations, share the link in the comment box and I'll add you to this map.

Better yet, create your own map, and add my blog articles to it.  

Through the collective effort of many, we'll gather the bricks needed to build the "Rome" of this vision.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy your Valentine's Day with friends and special loved ones!  

Please connect with me on any of the social media platforms that I show on this page.

And, if you are able, please visit this page and make a contribution to support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  

Super Bowl. Today and Past Articles.

Today's the Super Bowl game. I'm rooting for Philadelphia, since that's where my dad was born and where I have many family members.  For the first time in 50 years I won't be watching the game on TV. I don't want to see images of the current President and his billionaire friends plastered on the TV throughout the game.  I'll listen on the radio.

I started this blog in 2005. The first time I wrote about the Super Bowl game was in January 2007.

Here's some of what I wrote: 

"As I watched this game, I saw men who would be great spokespersons for tutoring/mentoring. For many years I've wanted to get sports groups involved with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Many athletes come out of poverty neighborhoods, and most have befitted from having many mentors and coaches in their lives.

While many athletes have foundations and do great things to help their communities, there's no strategy that I know of that enlists athletes and coaches in an effort to use their celebrity visibility to draw attention to a social cause, and to draw volunteers and donors to specific neighborhoods throughout a city.

For instance, on the Super Bowl broadcast Terry Bradshaw, a former star quarterback, and current TV broadcaster, made an appeal for viewers to stay involved in helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The TV footage focused at New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, but I heard him end a phrase with "and the other areas".

If someone created a map of the area that had been destroyed by the Hurricane, it would be possible to enlist athletes from many sports to adopt different communities, or zip codes, in the entire area. Then, whenever that athlete were to have a TV opportunity, he/she could draw attention to his zip code, as part of an effort to keep attention on the entire area of destruction. As the season moves from Basketball to baseball to football and back to hockey and basketball, different stars, in different cities, would have many opportunities to focus attention, and draw resources to the various parts of the entire geographic area where volunteers, donors, and all sorts of help will be needed for many years.

In the same way, I want to enlist athletes to focus attention on the high poverty neighborhoods of big cities. Instead of just talking about the Boys and Girls Clubs, or Big Brothers, Big Sisters, or other highly visible charities, we need to focus attention regularly on every neighborhood where kids need help, and the organizations in those neighborhoods who are providing help.

This is a strategy I hope athletes will adopt. If you read this, and you know a Bear, or a Bull, or a college coach, or even a high school coach, who might want to be a champion of this idea, please pass this on.

This is a team game too, just like football. We'll get to the Super Bowl of life if we can get more people to help us."

I've been using the graphic of a team on a football field in many of my Super Bowl and sports-related articles since then.  I encourage you to browse posts at this link and see what I've been writing.

Imagine seeing professional and college athletes standing in front of a map showing high poverty areas in the city where they play, or where they grew up, calling on people from business, philanthropy, faith groups and other sectors to help comprehensive, long-term, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in dozens of places.

I think many could be creating their own versions of my graphics and articles, and communicating the ideas better.  Because of their visibility as a celebrity, I'm sure more people will take time to look at what they share.

If you think this is a good idea, please share it with your network.  Connect with me on BlueSky, LinkedIn and other on-line spaces (see links here) and share your own strategies.  

And, if you like what I'm sharing, please visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills. 

Thank you!   Go Eagles!