"If it is to be, it is up to you and me"

This is me for the past 30 years.  I'm pushing a huge boulder up the side of a mountain, without much help.

Yet, I've been motivated by a phrase given to me in 1994 by former WGN TV's Merri Dee, who said, "If it is to be, it is up to you and me."  Here's a 2011 article where I combine her message with a quote from Steve Jobs, saying "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

What's my inner voice been telling me?  Why is this so difficult?

I want people to spend time learning about issues and potential solutions from libraries like I've been building for the past 50 years. 

I started building the Tutor/Mentor information library in the 1970s long before I knew of the Internet. I had majored in history in college in the 1960s then spent three years in US Army Intelligence.  I was sort of "hard wired" to seek out 'best available information' to use it for innovation and problem solving.

When I became a volunteer tutor in 1973 I started seeking ideas to support my weekly tutoring.  When I became the leader of that program in 1975 I expanded my search for ideas, reaching out to leaders of other programs in Chicago to see what I could learn from them (and what they could learn from me).

I held a full-time retail advertising job at the Montgomery Ward corporation with responsibilities that grew from 1973 to 1990.  When I started leading the tutoring program there were 100 pairs of elementary school kids and workplace volunteers. That number grew to 300 pairs by 1990.  There was no way I could personally train each of them to know all they needed to know, so I began to try to motivate them to be "active learners", digging into the library of information I had started collecting. 

I tried to create a culture of learning, engaging youth, volunteers, staff, board members and donors  

The library at the Montgomery Ward program started as four metal file cabinets, filled with learning materials and games for our elementary school students, then from 1980 to 1992 expanded to a 40-foot wall of shelves. 

When we moved to the 20th floor of the Montgomery Ward HQ tower in 1993 we had about 400 sq ft of space, just devoted to our library. It was open to our own volunteers and students, and to leaders of other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. 

That physical library now is down to a few books on shelves in my home office. The library is now all on-line, which has been happening since 1998, while the space (and funds) available to operate began to shrink.  There's some sadness there, but to me, this is a blessing. The information is available to far more people now than it ever was in the 1990s.

Home Page T/MC website - 1998

We started moving all this on-line in 1998 when one of the volunteers at the tutor/mentor program I was leading offered to build a website for us. We developed the graphic at the right for this first website to show our goal of connecting people from different backgrounds to the information, to each other, and to the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The page design was used help people navigate the information on the site. You could click on any of the blue circles and go to a section where we hosted lists of information/links to other people's websites.

From 1993 to 2000 I used printed newsletters to tell people about some of this information and encouraged them to visit the library at our Wards location.  Many of the tutor/mentor programs launched in the mid 1990s borrowed ideas from that library.  I hosted conferences every six months in Chicago and these became a place to gather new information and to help people understand the information and ideas within the library.  

I've used email newsletters, on-line forums, websites and social media since the early 2000s to point people to the web library.  It's now at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net

In many of my articles I've shown media stories from the 1990s that show the same problems facing Chicago 20 years ago are the same as we are facing now. My comments focus on the lack of consistent, long-term, strategy that engages people from throughout the region in solutions.

At the same time, I've used graphics like this to illustrate the constant learning and innovation needed to bring comprehensive learning supports to youth in all high poverty neighborhoods of urban areas like Chicago, and keep them in place for  many years.

In articles focused on learning, I point to the massive amount of information available, but the lack of time and motivation limiting most people from digging deeply into this information.

Others are thinking and writing of the same problems. I encourage you to visit Harold Jarche's blog and learn about Personal Knowledge Mastery. I've been following his ideas for more than 20 years.   I was also pleased to see an article on Twitter several years ago, titled "Personal Learning Networks: Learning in a Connected World".  I read it, and added it to this section of my web library, so others could find it and read it, too.  The article emphasizes the importance of building your own PLN (personal learning network), saying,

"Social learning and collaboration is a mindset, an attitude and not just a set of tools."

As the Internet library grew, the habits of personal learning did not grow nearly as fast as I hoped. Adults who have grown up without the internet, and without learning habits of Personal and Social Learning, are slow and resistant to spending time in on-line learning.

 
I created the graphic below in 2006 or 2007 to visualize the goal I hoped leaders at the tutor/mentor program I was leading would adopt and that donors would support. You can find it here.

I think this strategy could be supported in many formats, ranging from public school, to non-school tutoring/mentoring and learning, to home and to work. Some of the links I point to in my web library show that this is already happening in many places.

However, if we want to solve complex problems, I feel we need to teach learners to dig into web libraries, like the one I've been building, so that we're all looking at the same maps, and same range of information. If such libraries are supported by cMOOCs and other formats that encourage people to connect and share ideas with each other, I feel they can accelerate the relationship-building among people who already are concerned about the same issues...because they made the effort to enter the MOOC or the library in the first place.

We're now in the first week of the second term in the White House of a person who should be in jail, not moving the country into a dangerous future.  Yet, he was re-elected because millions of people did not spend time learning about the problems the USA and the world faces, and the dangers of political demagogues and self-enriching leaders. 

One of the sections of the Tutor/Mentor library is visualized with this concept map. 

Each node opens to a library of links and/or additional concept maps. The links point to hundreds of websites with information that people can be learning from. Many websites I point to are libraries themselves. It's a worldwide web of knowledge.

Only if it is used.  

And, only if it stays freely available to the world. The rise in censorship makes it possible that my entire library, along with those of many others, could be taken off line.   

While I've been collecting and sharing these ideas for more than 45 years, this work is far too large for any single person. The problems we face are complex, and will take decades of consistent effort to be reduced. Thus, while I seek partners, volunteers and donors to help me maintain my own web platform, I also seek philanthropists who might bring the Tutor/Mentor Institute into one or more universities, where more people can do the work I've been doing, in many more ways.

New platforms, secure from censorship, need to emerge.   If you find one, can you add a copy of my blogs,  my library and archives to it?

Learn more in these visual essays:
- Tutor/Mentor Learning Network - click here
- Form a Tutor/Mentor Connection Team on College Campuses - click here
- Role of Leaders - click here

If you're interested in these ideas connect with me on BlueSky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook and make me part of your own PLN. I keep reaching out through the same network to find others who I can learn from.