Former President Obama is in Chicago today. I saw a Tweet showing that he made a surprise visit at a South Side YMCA. It prompted me to create the graphic shown below.
The former President's visit gets a lot of attention, but it is just one small dot on the 12 year timeline from 1st grade through high school, or the even longer timeline of birth-to-work.
If kids live in areas of highly concentrated, segregated poverty, there are too few people in their lives daily modeling all the careers they might have when they are adults, and helping them do the work every day to reach those careers.
I'd love to see a blog by President Obama where he talks about his visit, and then shows a map like the one on the left, and says, organized non-school programs that connect kids and volunteers from many industries and professions need to be in every high poverty area of Chicago, for many years.
Maybe more people would listen and begin to figure out how to make such programs available and keep them in place for 10 to 20 consecutive years.
He could borrow ideas I've been sharing on this blog since 2005.
Heck, he could even adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection and make it a program of the Obama Foundation and the new Obama Library in Chicago.
I'm on Twitter @tutormentorteam if he wants to reach out to me.
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