Engaging Chicago Tutor/Mentor Orgs on Twitter

Below is a map showing locations of nearly 200 non-school tutoring and/or mentoring programs operating in the Chicago region. You can find the map on this page, along with a link to a list of programs that I've maintained since 1994.

Below is a map showing participation in the May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago every six months from May 1994 to May 2015. See the map here. See goals of the conference here.

I visit the web sites of every one of the Chicago organizations on my list at least twice a year, to update links and review what they show on their sites. Most  have Twitter and Facebook identities, and I follow or like everyone.  While a few are active in posting news about their activities on social media, most are not active.

Furthermore, I don't find many engaged in sharing ideas, talking about challenges, looking for solutions to problems, etc.

My Twitter handle is @tutormentorteam.

If you follow my Tweets for a few weeks you can see who I'm connecting with by looking at my posts and who I'm amplifying with my re-Tweets.  Take some time to follow some of those and see how other people are engaging with each other.

If you search hashtags (the # followed by a word) on Twitter you can see how some topics are discussed.  Here's a few recent:

#onthetable2017  - The Chicago Community Trust's May 16 event

#recommit2kids - the America's Promise campaign

#gradnation - focus on increasing highschool graduation rates

#digciz - Digital Citizenship

#clmooc - Connected Learning cMOOC

#futureofchildren - the hashtag for a Brookings.edu webinar and discussion

#sketch50 - see how people from around the world share visualizations they created each day for 50 days.

#SDGchallenge - help increase awareness and involvement in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals

The list of possible hashtags to search is unlimited. Thus, once you venture onto Twitter  you can begin following hashtags that come across your feed, or do your own search for topics that interest you or your organization.

Not enough time?
I recognize that most after school and tutor/mentor programs have small staffs doing too many different jobs in their organizations. So, I'm suggesting that your volunteers, board members, or even alumni, could be  your "advance scouts" into the Twitter and social media world, finding new ideas and then sharing those on their blog articles.

I'd love to be able to create a map some day that would represent tutor/mentor programs active on Twitter, showing a large percent of programs included.