Sharing past articles on Twitter

I've been writing on this blog for 15 years and I feel that some of the articles from the past are better than others.  I've encouraged people to use this blog as a study guide, a planning tool, and a resource for anyone seeking to help kids born or living in high poverty areas now move safely through school and into adult lives, jobs and careers.

To help people find past articles I often share some in Tweets.  Below are two that I posted this morning, showing "end of February" articles.

We're headed to a new month. Here's what I wrote at end of Feb 2012.

In Feb 2014 I wrote about #Obama's #MyBrothersKeeper in this article on #tutor #mentor blog. https://t.co/GlIz7xy3eq pic.twitter.com/TIUWsJScAQ

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) February 28, 2021

If you're using Twitter I encourage you to connect with me and follow the Tweets I share and then read some of the articles on this blog that I'm pointing to.

Share with others. Help build the network of support needed to make youth tutor, mentor and learning programs available in more places.

Navigating the Tutor/Mentor Resource Library

I started this blog in 2005 and have posted more than 1000 articles. Prior to that I had been creating PDF essays that I shared here, and before the internet, I used printed newsletters (see archive) which reached up to 12,000 people by 2002. 

This represents 40 years asking the same questions over, and over each year. All focused on helping volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach k-12 youth in high poverty hours, with long-term efforts that transform the lives of both kids and volunteers.

I started asking these questions when I first became a tutor in 1973 then a program leader in 1975.  As a leader my role was to focus on creating a structure that would enable individual pairs of youth and volunteers to connect, build relationships, and provide a wide range of learning and mentoring support based on the needs of each individual student. Those needs kept changing from year-to-year, as they grew up. I also had to recruit those students and volunteers and keep them involved.  When we became a non profit in 1990, I had to learn how to raise money to pay the bills, too. 

So, I've learned much. I've collected a lot of information and produced a ton of material. Now, how do I help people navigate this?

I've tried many things, but below I'm going to show just a few.

The first website for the Tutor/Mentor Connection was created by one of my volunteers in 1998 and given the name http://www.tutormentorconnection.org  The graphic at the left was the original design on the home page of that website. You could click on any spoke and go to a page with information related to it. You can view this page in the Internet Archive. This site was rebuilt in 2006 by a team from IUPUI, then again in 2011 by a volunteer from IUPUI.

In 2008 the site crashed in August just prior to the annual Citywide Volunteer Recruitment Campaign, so Steve Roussos, a volunteer from the  University of Kansas, created a second site, named http://www.tutormentorexchange.net.   While the original site was working again in a few months I began to use the new site to host PDF essays that I had been creating to visually communicate the ideas and strategies that I had been building since 1975.  In 2011 when I formed Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, I used this site as my primary website.

So, if you want to know what resources I have available, you need to take time to tour the site, opening every link, just like going into every store as you (used to) visit a new shopping mall.  To help you along an intern from South Korea created the video below in 2015.

When you're on this website be sure to look at the Mission, Vision and Strategy pages on the right side.

So that's one way to learn what information I host, but it's not a logical, step-by-stem learning guide.

Thus, a few years ago I created the concept  map shown below.

You start with the blue box at the top left, then work your way down, reading the linking text, and opening the links under each box to see what it points to. You might start just by reading through the entire concept map without opening any links. That will give you an overall understanding. Then go back and dig deeper.

Once again, I was lucky to have an Intern from South Korea do a visual introduction of this concept map. She created it using Prezi, then put that in a video.  Unfortunately the original Prezi is no longer available, but the video does a nice job.

 

Using these videos and concept map you should have enough of an understanding for you to be motivated to dig deeper, into the strategy essays and concept maps and the many articles on this blog.

In the first graphic of this article I wrote "what are all the things we need to know and do".  If you look at the tag cloud at the left, these words represent categories of knowledge that we need to know, if we're going to do everything needed to fill high poverty neighborhoods with well organized, well funded, non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs that help kids entering fist grade today be finishing 12th grade and headed on to college, vocational education and/or jobs 12 years later.

There is no short cut. ALL of these ideas need to be understood and implemented in every city and state of the US and the world.  

One of the tags is "Tipping Points" which represents actions that might make all of this more possible.  I included the graphic at the right in this article, suggesting that the body of ideas and library of links be hosted by a university (or more) and incorporated into a degree program intended to produce leaders who understood all of this information as they entered their careers.

Wona Chang was the intern from South Korea who created these two videos in 2015. Meet her and other interns on this site. 

If you're read this far, thank you.  Now think of ways you might enlist students from your own community to read these and create their own interpretations, just as Wona and past interns have done. Maybe that could be part of a class at a high school or university.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram. Find links here. I look forward to connecting with you and talking about these ideas and seeing how you are sharing them, or your own strategies.

If you'd like to help Fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, click here. 

Have you drawn attention to "Black History Month"?

This map shows segregation in the Chicago region and is part of an extensive article titled: "Segregation Map: America is more diverse than ever, but still segregated", in the May 2, 2018 Washington Post. I show the map and share a link to the article in this post on the MappingforJustice blog. 

February is Black History Month and millions are doing something to draw attention and to encourage study of Slavery and Black history in America.

If you've liked, reTweeted, or done anything to draw attention to Black History Month, I urge you to take time to read this article in The Atlantic, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's titled "The Case for Reparations" and reviews the long history of slavery, Jim Crow, separate but not equal, housing discrimination, etc. in America.  

Maps are a valuable tool for showing where people were most affected and where they need the most help.  You can find many map-based articles on this blog.   

In addition, I've been highlighting some of the stories and websites hosting them in articles on the MappingforJustice blog. As I've done this I've added updates to some articles as I find new information.  Here's an example, where I've added updates to this article on Redlining, which is a formal practice that forced Black Americans to live in highly segregated cities. 

I've been building a library of information, freely available to anyone, since 1993.  One section focuses on Black History and another on Poverty, Race and Inequality.   

As I've found new articles I began adding updates to the bottom of blog articles a few years ago.  I created this concept map to aggregate links to some of those and to help readers find the articles I'm hoping many will read.  

In a busy world full of social media too many people don't spend much time reading and thinking deeply about issues that affect them, their children and grandchildren, and their communities.  

I created the graphics below in the 1990s to visualize how a site-based tutor/mentor program can attract volunteers from diverse backgrounds, workplaces, colleges, etc.  As they connect with kids they become a form of bridging social capital, expanding the network of "who you know" that helps people find opportunities and overcome challenges.

However, these graphics also communicate another idea. Those people who become involved can share what they are learning and what they are reading with people in their family, work, college, religious and social networks, educating more people and getting more people involved in helping kids to careers by direct involvement in organized tutor/mentor programs or in working to remove the structural barriers that have built up over hundreds of years.

I've posted nearly 300 articles focused on "learning" on this blog. Most are not aimed at the type of learning students do in school. They focus on learning adults need to do to create a better world for themselves, their kids and grand kids, and for all others at the same time.  You can't read all these in a day, but you could visit many if it were part of an on-going process.  

Think of my blogs as "Sunday School for Future Leaders" where groups of people gather weekly, read some text, discuss it, then go live their lives, hopefully applying what they read.

If you're reading this. Make an effort to share it.  

I depend on contributions to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Click here if you'd like to help. 

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

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 it's 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 the 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.

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.

Building a Super Bowl of Support for Youth Serving Programs

If we want great youth serving organizations reaching k-12 youth in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other places we need to provide traditional training to help staff, volunteers, board members learn how to build effective programs.

However, unless we also educate resource providers, volunteers, media and political leaders to take an active, on-going role that delivers operating resources, talent, ideas and technology to programs in every neighborhood, on an on-going basis, few programs will have the resources needed to put good ideas into practice.

Read on. If you agree, share with people in your own network.  

I posted this graphic on my blog in April 2013. It expresses a lot of ideas. So I thought I’d try to break it down into components.  After you review this I encourage volunteers, youth and others to create their own versions, using animation, video, different social media platforms, etc.  

Share your versions with me and on social media. 

Here is same graphic, but with numbers on different parts. In the paragraphs below I’ll show the meaning.

To get to the goal we want we need to influence both resource providers and program organizers.

First, the goal of this graphic, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is to help high quality, long-term, site-based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty neighborhoods. This section of the Tutor/Mentor web library includes dozens of research articles that show the impact of poverty, indicating the potential benefits of mentor-rich programs.

Second, if we want mentor-rich programs in more high poverty neighborhoods, then we must find ways to increase the flow of needed resources to all programs, and keep this consistent for many years. To do that we need to influence what the donor and resource provider do, not just what programs do.

I’ve followed last week's National Mentoring Summit and posted comments on Twitter. More than 1,000 people attended virtual the Summit. I shared a few of my Twitter posts in this article. 

The workshops called attention to mentoring as a strategy but even with 1000 participants there are too few paying attention.  Two workshops called attention to building relationships as an outcome of organized volunteer-based programs, pointing to social capital ideas and theory.  However, they said, "too few programs actually use social capital terms in describing their strategy and input."  In addition, they reported that "too few schools and educators have strategies intended to help youth build needed relationships."

These are “attention gaps” we need to close and we cannot do that without more consistent, and strategic, support from business, public leaders, media and other potential resource providers.

Let’s look at this chart closer:

A tutor/mentor program supports a connection between an adult volunteer with a youth living in an area where indicators show extra adult support and learning activities are needed. NOTE: many mentoring strategies are not primarily focused on youth living in high poverty. However, there is much research showing that for youth living in high poverty the non-school hours offer risk if not filled with positive learning activities and that there are too few resources in most neighborhoods. The Tutor/Mentor Institute's primary focus is helping mentor rich programs reach youth living in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago.

There are a wide variety of formal mentoring programs, and many youth are involved in informal mentoring. This 2014 report: The Mentoring Effect, shows that too few youth are engaged in formal mentoring.  This remains true in 2020, and with the remote learning restrictions posted by Covid19, there are even greater gaps in mentoring availability. 

This is one graphic from my web site illustrating a need to support youth for many years. On Pinterest.com you can find more graphics like this, which point to a long-term result, which is when kids have made the journey from first grade through high school, post high school learning, and into jobs with family level wages or better. Our aim is to help youth programs build strategies that support this long-term goal.

View this "Mentoring Kids to Careers" concept map for a different version of this #birthtowork idea.

This graphic is intended to illustrate the infrastructure needed in every tutor/mentor program. Most people, including youth and volunteers, don’t see the work it takes to recruit and retain youth and volunteers, and find the operating dollars and other resources needed to build an ongoing program. See this graphic at this link.

This "tipping point" article talks about building future leaders and donors for mentor-rich programs.

This article uses teams on a football field to visualize the idea that great teams need a wide range of on-going support. So do great youth programs.  

I’ve piloted uses of maps since 1994 to illustrate the need for organized tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago. Without the maps donors and media focus on a few high profile programs, or a few high profile neighborhoods. You don't get a distribution of resources to all of the neighborhoods, or all of the programs, which need consistent support.

The oil well graphic indicates the need for programs to help youth from birth to work. See more maps at http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com

Most efforts to support non profits, including tutor/mentor programs, share ideas that help programs improve themselves, and their operations. This concept map shows a section of the Tutor/Mentor Web library that represents a college of resources that tutor/mentor leaders could draw from to be better at what they do.

However, most smaller programs are so overwhelmed and under financed that they can't draw from this information for on-going learning as much as they need to. This section of the library should be read by business leaders, donors and policy makers. It shows challenges facing non profits.

As the Iceberg graphic demonstrated, every program has common needs for a wide range of talent. Few have the money to hire all the talent they need or purchase the best technology and other tools needed to run a high quality business.

This is where we need to grow. Business leaders have tremendous expertise in building chains of stores operating in multiple locations. I wrote about Polk Bros, showing how advertising and sales promotion were used to draw customers to stores. On Pinterest I show many graphics that illustrate the role of business and professionals could take to draw needed resources to volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs all over the city. I created this “Virtual Corporate office PDF” to illustrate the way volunteer talent in many companies and industries could be mobilized and focused on supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs throughout big cities like Chicago.

If programs are consistently supported, and are constantly learning from each other, and engaging all of their supporters in efforts to constantly improve the organization’s impact, they should be able to show on their web sites many indicators of their value and impact. This pdf illustrates some of the things a “shopper” should want to see when looking at a tutor/mentor program’s web site.

Teams of volunteers from business, universities, high schools, etc. could help programs collect and share this information on web sites, and could provide some of the advertising support needed every day to encourage more people to look at these web sites and provide support to help one, or many, programs grow.

As a result of this support there should be many programs with a long-term history and the ability to posts murals like this, showing youth and volunteers who have been part of programs in the past, and who are still connected to those programs today, while helping programs provide services to the next generation of youth.

Now, when you look at this graphic, do you understand what it is showing? Can you share this with people in your own network? Take a look at this blog to see how interns have been creating visualizations and new interpretations of graphics like this. Start a project at your school, or in your church or in your tutor/mentor program, where youth and volunteers create their own interpretations, focusing on your own community and/or school neighborhood if you're not in Chicago.

While Super Bowl advertising is drawing attention to products and services offered by various companies, we need a similar level of outreach to draw attention to ideas like this and to lists of youth tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities, encouraging volunteers to give time, talent and dollars to build great youth tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in more places.

Since we don't have the advertising dollars to lead such a campaign we depend on the voices of individuals.  Can you be one of those voices?  

Connect with me on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram to share your stories.   

If you value what I'm writing about, a small contribution will help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.