Looking for "Scout Bees" and "Worker Bees"

Below is a graphic I've used often on this blog. 

It shows how YOU can share information you find on this blog and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website with people in your network, who then share it with an even larger network of people.

Below is text from an article I wrote in 2007 where I shared this idea.

A couple of months ago I pointed out a report titled "Reframing School Drop Out as a Public Health Issue."

Today I found the web site of the Oxford Health Alliance Initiative. It's LINKS sections is extensive, and the site offers excellent networking and collaboration features. (12-2018 note: this site no longer active. Use Community Health Solutions as a resource.)

I wish I had time to browse all of these links and see what connections I can make between them and the work the Tutor/Mentor Connection is doing, but I don't. So I'm appealing to readers to take on this role.

In a way, I'm looking for volunteers to take the role of "scout bees" who go out looking for food sources, then alert "worker bees" who bring the food back to a bee hive. Here's an article on eLearnspace that prompted my thinking on this.

If you follow this analogy, the T/MC web site is the bee hive/colony. People who go out through the internet and share information, like I do here are acting like scout bees. They are sharing our information in a wider network and are connecting the people and information in these networks to the T/MC web site and those who visit it.

In many ways the scout bees are network weavers, acting to connect information and knowledge, with a purpose of making good things happen that are not possible by the efforts of people working in small groups, and in isolation from each other.

By reading this blog, and passing it on to others, you're taking the role of a scout bee, worker bee, and network weaver.

.... End 2007 text ....

At the left is a graphic created in 2011 by Sam Lee, and intern from South Korea, via IIT in Chicago.  She used the graphic at the top of the page as her inspiration.  View this article to see how she divided my graphic into two separate graphics. 

My goal since I started leading a single volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago in 1975 has been to inspire other volunteers to use the information I make available to help other volunteers and students have greater success.  Since starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 that goal has expanded to helping hundreds of other youth programs grow, and helping more form in areas where additional programs are needed.

As we enter December 2023 that goal has not changed.  Yet, the tools to communicate these ideas have become dramatically different. 

One of my mentors is Kevin Hodgson, a middle school teacher from Western Massachusetts, who I met via an online Connected Learning event in 2013.  In this article Kevin shares poems that he found on various social media sites.  And in this article, he demonstrates how to use a Google AI tool to dig deeper into poems written by another CLMOOC friend, Terry Elliott.

Both articles (and many others on Kevin's blog) demonstrate a form of learning and sharing that I hope many will duplicate, using the many articles I've posted on this blog since 2005 and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website since the late 1990s. 

I've added this "read Tutor/Mentor blog!" text to a photo of me speaking to volunteers and youth at a year-end celebration during the mid 1980s.  While I did not have a blog then I was saying "Get involved".

Helping kids in high poverty areas have the on-going support system they need to move safely from birth to adult lives and jobs where they can raise their own kids free of poverty, requires the involvement of millions of people.

Solving the other complex problems facing our selves and the kids we mentor, will require the involvement, and learning, of even more people.

Become a "Scout Bee". Or a "Worker Bee". Or both.

Thanks for reading.  I invite you to connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, LinkedIn and now Bluesky (I have 4 invite codes for anyone who wants to join Bluesky.  Just connect with me on one of my social media platforms.)  

Finally I have three wishes.

1) Visit my list of Chicago youth tutor, mentor and learning programs and choose at least one to receive a year-end gift from you. 

2) Visit my December 19th Birthday page and "light a candle" on my 77th birthday cake to help me continue this work in 2024

3) Visit my Fund T/MI page and make a year-end contribution.