Building the Network. Who's Here. Who's Not Here?

Just read a post by Kevin Hodgson, a 6th grade teacher from Western Mass, who I have come to know over the past four years by my participation in the Connected Learning MOOC.

In his post Kevin included this Storify, showing a conversation from a Twitter Chat held in July 2016.



This type of conversation needs to be taking place in many sectors, including the youth development, tutoring, mentoring and non-school program sector. It needs to include volunteers, educators, youth (and alumni), parents, donors, evaluators, business partners and policy makers, not just program staff and leaders.

Where do you start?

In Kevin's article, and in the Twitter chat, we talked about what the organizers could do to expand participation.  In Tutor/Mentor Conferences I  organized from 1994-2015 we talked about what  programs can do to actively recruit volunteers.

However, I am focusing on turning this around. I became part of the #CLMOOC in 2013 after participating earlier in an Education Technology and Media MOOC, and a Deeper Learning MOOC. I found announcements for these as I followed my Twitter and social media feeds, and was curious enough to visit the web site, see what they were doing, and click the "join" button.

From that point on, it was a matter of listening, commenting and building relationships.  Sheri Edwards, another educator, who I met in the #CLMOOC, posted this article, showing ways for people to get started in on-line learning networks.

She said "Everyone starts somewhere. Just start".

Thus, the group grows as members reach out to friends, or through their social media networks, and invite others to join in.

I created this graphic in the 1990s to show how volunteers involved in tutor/mentor programs could be inviting people they know to visit our web sites and get information and ideas that they could discuss in small groups of friends, co-workers, faith group members, etc.

Now these discussions can also be held in organized MOOCs, using Twitter chats, Google and Skype hangouts, Facebook, Google+ and many other types of platforms.

As that happens, maps can capture participation information and support analysis and discussions of "Who's here and Who's Missing."

As a result future maps will fill in with larger participation from more of the different groups who might contribute ideas, solutions, and even resources.

Want To Make a Difference? Spend Time In Deeper Learning

Saturday I included this graphic in this article, and pointed to an annotation platform called NowComment, where I highlighted sections of the map, and offered comment to try to help readers build their own  understanding.

As my #clmooc friends Terry Elliott and Kevin Hodgson took a look and added their own comments, I responded. Thus, we've started a conversation around this strategy map, using the NowComment annotation platform.

It takes a certain level of commitment, and time, to create these maps, explain them, and read them. They are not 140 character sound bytes.  Yet, unless people spend that time, they won't know what is being offered and how the ideas might be used by them in their own efforts to help reduce poverty and inequality in big cities like Chicago.

After posting my blog on Saturday I came across an article by the Global Priorities Project,  with the graphic shown below embedded as a Prezi presentation. You can see it at https://web.archive.org/web/20230427060638/http://globalprioritiesproject.org/2015/09/flowhart/

Just looking at this graphic will probably cause a lot of people to move on to something else. I spent about an hour reading each node and following the lines that helped me move from one point to another. I did not open the links that were provided, and dig even deeper into the ideas, but that would be the next step.  I did respond to the invitation to share my own ideas.

When I started  using the Internet in 1998 I was excited by the potential for putting complex ideas on a web site that other people, from anywhere in the world, could find and read...at their own pace.

I use concept maps the way this group uses a Prezi, to try to guide people sequentially from one part of the map to another.  If you visit this page, you can find a few Prezi presentations done by interns working with me from 2005 to 2014. They work the same way.

In order to teach, and motivate, people to spend time looking at these documents, I think we need to be teaching young people to create them, as part of their own classroom and non-school learning experiences. I've invited others to look at my presentations and create their own interpretations, applying the ideas to their own community, or to the work they are doing in their own tutor/mentor program.

As you do your research, take a look at this article where I introduce systems thinking work being led by Gene Bellinger and apply it to my own efforts.  The graphic is a screen shot from one of Gene's videos.

I hope some of  you will spend some time looking at these presentations and reading the linked blog articles. Then take me up on that offer as you begin a new school year over the next few weeks.

As your students create new understanding through their own work, let's aggregate that work so others will find it and learn from it.

Could this be learning activity in non-school program?

I get my ideas by learning from others. It's an on-going process that I started over 40 years ago. It's been enhanced over the past 16 years by my active engagement with others via the Internet. I've been part of a Deeper Learning MOOC #DLMOOC since January 20, 2014 and in my email every day I get 10 to 20 posts from other participants. I can't look at them all, but I try to look at some.

Thus, today, this video was posted, showing a learning activity taking place in 2007. With so much emphasis on STEM, critical thinking, problem solving, etc. this seems like a great activity that could be taking places in a school, or in a non-school program.



Between 2000 and 2011 a partnership existed between Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin and Cabrini Connections, the tutor/mentor program in Chicago that I led from 1992 to mid 2011. The main event in this partnership was a three-day summer workshop organized by grad students and faculty at Edgewood College, which was presented at the Cabrini Connections facility in Chicago. This blog article describes the 2011 event.

This story from 2004 is one showing the Edgewood Collge program. It describes the planning process. "In collaboration with Cabrini Connections, a tutoring and mentoring agency, Edgewood students help youths evaluate their lives and develop long-term goals. Cabrini-Green children then travel to Edgewood College, where they take part in activities meant to guide them toward a brighter future."

If a college can develop this type of program and keep it going for over a decade, why can't other colleges duplicate the program described in this video, and partner with youth organizations in high poverty neighborhoods, making it a summer learning activity, or a year round learning activity?

While it would be great to think this might become part of the curriculum of every Chicago Public School serving youth in high poverty neighborhoods, "Hell might freeze over before that is a reality." Volunteers from businesses and colleges can bring this learning into these neighborhoods by by-passing the bureaucracy of schools and the education establishment and making it part of innovative non-school youth serving organizations.

If you're already doing this please offer a workshop in the May 19, 2014 (and future) Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference held in Chicago so you can help inspire others to duplicate this effort.

Changing Education Paradigms

I've been taking part in a Deeper Learning MOOC, #DLMOOC, which started this week, and one member shared this RSA Animate video by Sr. Ken Robinson. I've posted some other videos by RSA Animate in the past and would love to have the capacity to communicate my ideas as effectively.

This week the National Mentoring Summit will be held in Arlington, VA. While I attended the past two years, this year I'm going to follow via the live stream and see if I can connect with more people than I was able to when I was part of a crowd of over 700 people. I will be posting some comments on Twitter, using #2014NM.

Here's an article I wrote in October 2005, following a White House conference on at-risk youth. In this article I wrote:

"Finally, what disappoints me even more, is that there are too many people holding conferences that draw attention to significant issues, are not using the Internet to encourage contact, networking, interaction and engagement among the people who attended and those who might have just heard about it in the media. "

I'm please that MENTOR is offering the live stream and encouraging Twitter interactions, but I'm not sure how much individual tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, or around the country, are encouraging their youth, volunteers, staff, Directors, donors and other supporters to connect in on-line learning events during the same period as a smaller group of people are connecting in some part of the country in an expensive, face to face event.

The ideas shared in the Deeper Learning MOOC, in the RSA Animate video, and in the Tutor/Mentor Web Library, need to be part of on-going learning, supported by a wide range of facilitators who work on-line, and/or in thousands of individual locations. We all want our kids to grow up safely, and be able to hold jobs, be responsible citizens and have happy lives. But to help some kids get from "here to there" we need to have a lot more people connected to each other, and to ideas and resources that are needed to support the progress of kids through school and into work and careers.

During the coming week, and for the rest of the year, I'll look forward to connecting with more people who are sharing ideas and using the information to build stronger, mentor-rich, support systems for kids.

Without Effective Leadership Same Problems Continue

Yesterday I wrote an article pointing out how the Polk Bros retail stores used advertising to build attention and draw customers to their stores, and how they used events, sales promotions, give-aways, etc. to motivate customers to buy something when they came to those stores.

I also told of my participation in a DEEPER LEARNING MOOC, #dlmooc, connecting more than 1000 people. Last January I participated in an Education Technology and Media MOOC (#ETMOOC) and this week participants like Paul Signorelli, have written reflections showing all the benefits of participating.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 with a goal of helping constantly improving, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach youth in more places. In this 4-part strategy map, you can see that step two of the strategy is to increase the frequency of media stories that would lead to greater volunteer and donor support of growing tutor/mentor programs.

One strategy to achieve this goal was to create map-stories following negative news stories in local medial.

These are a few examples of map-stories created in the 1990s. If you browse through articles on this site tagged 'media', 'maps' or 'violence' you will see many more examples, created in the 2000s. Visit the Mapping For Justice blog and you'll see many more examples of maps used to draw attention and resources to areas with high crime and violence, high concentrations of poorly performing schools, and high violence.

The result of this campaign should be maps that show more programs in more places, along with charts showing programs like the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth growing in more industries, and growing the amount of money and volunteer involvement from their industry on a year-to-year basis.

However, that has not happened. Why?

I can not find evidence that any leader, from any industry in the Chicago region, has devoted consistent advertising resources to draw attention to tutoring/mentoring, and to draw volunteers and operating dollars to programs throughout the city, or to programs near places where they do business, or where employees or customers live.

I can not find evidence that the current, or former mayor of Chicago, or any alderman, state elected official or county president, has led a weekly, yearly campaign, intended to draw needed volunteers, dollars and technology resources to the tutor/mentor programs operating in various Chicago neighborhoods. Even the occasional public declarations of support for Chicago's kids don't work like a Polk Bros ad to draw attention to tutor/mentor programs all over the city, and to motivate people to volunteer time, or give operating dollars, to support existing programs, or to help new programs start in neighborhoods with great need, but too few programs.

This Village Map shows that people from many sectors need to be involved in helping kids grow up and be prepared for 21st century jobs. If leaders post on their web sites what they do to build successful tutor/mentor programs, using maps to show where they are helping, and charts to show how many volunteers, dollars are involved, and how that grows from year to year, we could put links on the village maps to their web sites.

When we show leaders in every sector, leading a Polk Bros type advertising campaign, over a 10 to 30 year period, we will begin to see the number of mentor-rich programs grow in more places, and we'll begin to see more stories of how young people were helped through school and into a job by a mentor and/or a business.

Until that happens we'll continue to have media stories showing tragedy and high profile people, but not ending with a "call to action" that points to places throughout the city where help is needed and where people can get involved.

What's needed to support this data collection, map making, etc.? How can youth take a meaningful role? Let's meet to talk about this.

Lessons from Polk Bros – Power of Advertising!

On January 8 I attended the Polk Bros Foundation’s 25th Anniversary. I wrote about that in this article.

While leaving the event I was given a copy of a book titled “I Bought It at Polk Bros: The Story of an American Retailing Phenomenon”. It’s available on Amazon. Free copies might be available from the Polk Bros Foundation.

This is the story of the growth of a Chicago retail giant, starting with a very, very small appliance store, in the 1930s. It’s the story of an immigrant family, and the vision of one man, Sol Polk, the company’s founder and president until he died in the 1980s.

This story resonated with me because from 1973 to 1990 I held retail advertising management positions with the Montgomery Ward Corporation, a competitor of Polk Bros in the Chicago market. Being part of the advertising department, I and the writers, artists and production people who worked with me, were constantly frustrated by how the merchandise people would change ads often, and frequently at the last minute.

In reading about Sol Polk’s commitment to advertising, and how he watched competitor ads and made last minute changes to TV and Radio scripts and print ads so Polk Bros could have a lower price, I recognized what was happening in my own company, and how savagely each business competed for customers every day.

(This is the front cover of one supplement I created for the Automotive Department at Wards)

So what does this have to do with volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring? I led the tutoring program at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago from 1975 to 1990, as a volunteer while holding advertising roles with growing responsibility. By the early 1980s I was in charge of creative development of all national print advertising.

Thus, leading a volunteer program with 200-300 pairs of kids/volunteer meeting weekly, and virtually no paid staff, was a real challenge.

I learned very early that there was no way to provide enough training to volunteers to solve every problem they would face as a tutor/mentor. All kids were different. All volunteers were different. They all were constantly changing.

Thus, I began to borrow from my advertising experiences to share ideas and motivate actions within my volunteer world. Every week I created a one or two page “newsletter” which included tips for tutors, announcements of weekly activities, and an encouragement to dig deeper into our resource library to understand why the tutor/mentor program was needed, and ways volunteers could support the overall program’s growth.

Initially my “mass communications” was a mimeograph machine to make copies, and my own two feet to pass out these copies each week to our volunteers. The format for making copies changed as we moved to desk top publishing and copy machines in the 1980s and 1990s, but what really changed was the Internet becoming a place where we could host ideas that any of our teens, volunteers and donors could find them. By 2002 I was sending a weekly email newsletter to our volunteers, and a monthly email newsletter to all of our supporters.

While this works within a single program, if you have the time to create a newsletter, and to research ideas that you would put into it, not every program has people who can do the design, writing, formatting, publishing and distribution of electronic communications.

What’s more significant, motivating people to read the communications weekly and dig deeper into the research, and to form small groups to discuss the ideas with peers and other volunteers, is a challenge that still has not been solved.

Busy volunteers, staff members, directors, donors, etc. have many other priorities in their lives beyond their involvement in the tutor/mentor program. Even people paid to do the job spend so much time with day-to-day challenges of supporting youth and volunteers and keeping funds coming in, that there is very little “flexible time” to spend reading and “learning”.

I’ve written about MOOCs in the past year and this week I’m participating in a Deeper Learning MOOC, that engages more than 1000 people from around the country around the topic of “Deeper Learning”, which according to the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, is…..“students engaged in deeper learning—are using their knowledge and skills in a way that prepares them for real life.

They are mastering core academic content, like reading, writing, math, and science, while learning how to think critically, collaborate, communicate effectively, direct their own learning, and believe in themselves (known as an “academic mindset”.”

Over the past week I’ve read several hundred introductions, mostly from educators. What concerns me, is that too few of these are people working in big city school districts, such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, Houston, LA, etc. If leaders and thinkers from these cities are not engaged in “deeper learning” how can we expect to bring higher quality learning experiences to inner city youth.

I’ve also seen very few participants in my MOOCs from people who lead non school tutoring and/or mentoring programs. If representatives from programs, and from those who support these programs, are not engaged in “deeper learning” how can they find ways to constantly improve the impact of their programs, or the flow of operating resources and talent that are essential to program improvement?

Sol Polk understood the power of advertising. He also recognized that he could get other people to pay for a large part of the costs of his advertising. The people who manufactured the merchandise sold in Polk Bros stores provided dollars for advertising costs. There’s an entire chapter on this in the book.

In his TED talk, Dan Pallotta talks about the power of advertising, and shows how donors are not willing to pay the costs for non profits to advertise. Read more here.

When I started Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, one of the key goals was to increase the frequency of news stories talking about tutoring/mentoring programs in Chicago. That’s still a goal.

Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC will never have millions of dollars for advertising. Thus, companies, churches, college groups, athletes, etc. need to become our “advertising partners” using their own media, visibility, in-store displays, etc. to build awareness and draw “customers” --- youth, volunteers, donors, etc. --- directly to the different tutor/mentor locations operating in Chicago or other cities.

Polk Bros did not just spend millions of dollars on advertising and promotions without a clear purpose. They ran “sales” and “events” throughout the year, which were intended to motivate customers to come to their stores. VOLUME was the goal of Sol Polk.

VOLUME is also the goal of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. We must dramatically increase the number of people who are thinking about tutor/mentor programs every day, and who are visiting web sites to learn more about where, why and how they can help programs in different neighborhoods of Chicago.

National Mentoring Month is in January every year. Events throughout the month have encourage people to post articles on blogs, comments on Twitter and Facebook. New stories have shown how mentors can change a youth’s life. This needs to be happening 12 months a year, not just in January.

Every story needs to end with a “call to involvement”. A “hook” as Sol Polk would have described it, that motivates a customer to come to a store, or to support a tutor/mentor program in one of Chicago’s neighborhoods.

If you’re an advertising professional, a retail executive, a PR manager, etc. this is a strategy you certainly should understand, and that you can support in your own efforts to help Chicago become a place where EVERY child has the opportunities and support to find work, establish a career, and raise a family out of the grip of poverty.

If you are a foundation established using wealth created by entrepreneurs who started their companies in the early part of the 19th century, why not go beyond giving grants. Why not spend some of your own capital to create “advertising” that draws other donors, volunteers and leaders to support the same programs you are funding?

Few foundation grants provide more than 5% of the total operating costs for any non profit. Many don’t even cover costs of general operations…which is the cost of keeping the doors open and constantly improving. Thus, it would seem to make sense that using foundation dollars (in addition to advertising and sales promotion from others) would help attract more (up to 100%) of the dollars every non-school tutor/mentor program needs to operate effectively every year.

Where are people talking about this? Is anyone hosting a “Deeper Learning” MOOC that engages donors, business leaders, advertisers and shows them more ways to help draw on-going customer support to all of the different non profits needed to enrich a city like Chicago? During the National Mentoring Summit, being held in Washington, DC on January 30 and 31, many of the sessions will be available on line (for $20 fee). Maybe some of us can connect via that forum.

Who wants to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences so they can attract leaders and support this type of conversation, face to face, and via online communities? The next conference is May 19 and sponsors and workshop presenters are encouraged to step forward and introduce themselves.