Deeper learning and lost digital archives

I've been sharing ideas for ways people can start and sustain volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs that help kids in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago in 1993 (and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011).

As I searched past articles for inspiration for this article, I initially was going to share an article showing work interns had done in past years to help share the ideas I launched in PDF essays and blog articles.

That brought me to an article I wrote on this blog in 2018, which I'm going to repost, with comments.

Start 2018 ---

My first line was "In this article I'm going to write about the Thinglink360 video created by Kevin Hodgson, a middle school teacher from Western Massachusetts, and more than 20 other people starting in February 2018."

However, Thinglink360 no longer is open for public viewing so the video by Kevin, and the projects I created, no longer work.  Furthermore, my link to Kevin's profile on Twitter does not work either, because Kevin deleted his Twitter account due to the actions of its owner.  He's not the only one.

Then I wrote about this cMap which I created in 2018, inspired by the project Kevin is describing.  I hope you'll follow along and see the connection.

See Interns w T/MC cMap at this link. 

I first met Kevin in 2013 as part of the Connected Learning #CLMOOC, and have grown to appreciate and value the ideas he shares on his blog. Thus, I visit often. So in early April 2018 I opened this article, which was the first of a three-part reflection under the title of "Creating a Virtual Gallery of Digital Art".

It all started about three months ago (mid February?) when Kevin got an idea. "What if the (open and university) folks dabbling in Networked Narratives (#NetNarr) together created a collaborative piece of trans-media artwork together?"

Kevin brainstormed the idea with a few other on-line friends and soon created this site as an invitation for others to join in the fun. He titled this the NetNarrAlchemyLab.

In his blog Kevin wrote, "Early on, we had a vision of an immersive virtual lab that visitors could wander around in, like a museum."  He went on "We wanted to create a "doorway" in and a "doorway" out.

Over six to eight weeks 20 people from different parts of the world (Australia, Scotland, USA, France, etc) created more than 50 projects. The project began with a group from the #NetNarr ecosystem, but soon spread to folks in the #DS106 and #clmooc groups.   

I encourage you to visit Kevin's blog and read his description of what worked, what did not, and see how he keeps drawing attention to the work he and others have been doing. 

Another change I learned about today is that Kevin has reformatted his blog. No longer does it show past articles or links to other blogs on his side bar.  

See graphic in this article

As I said, I've been engaging with the #clmooc world for five years and have shared some of these interactions using graphics and concept maps posted in more than 30 articles. 

As of December 2024 that number is up to 75.

I've watched Kevin and many others from several on-line communities connect with each other and amplify the work they are each doing via their own blog articles, Tweets and Facebook posts. The motivations for these interactions are many. For instance, if you visit this #clmooc home page you can see how such interactions have been stimulated in that group.  

Since late 2023 many of the people who I met on Twitter are now using Mastodon and BlueSky to connect and share ideas.  

Find Dan Bassill on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/tutormentor.bsky.social
Find Dan Bassill on Mastodon - https://mastodon.social/@tutormentor1, https://mastodon.garden/@tutormentor1 and @tutormentor1@mastodon.cloud

As you do you'll see a few examples of where I've tried to draw members into the work I've been doing since 1993, helping non-school tutor/mentor programs reach k-12 youth in high poverty neighborhoods.

So far, I've not found many of the Chicago tutor/mentor programs on this list on Mastodon and BlueSky. Few use Twitter any more.  Some are on Instagram. Some on Facebook. Some on LinkedIn.

That means people looking for information about programs and ways to help them are going to have a more difficult time.

I liked Kevin's description of his goal, "to create  an immersive virtual lab that visitors could wander around in, like a museum."  That's the way I think of the web library I've created, and it communicates my own goal that people come in, wander around, do some reading, then share what they see with others.

As I looked at the Thinglink360 I wanted to create something similar to show work interns have done while working with Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC between 2006 and 2015, with the goal that some of these educators would duplicate these intern efforts and for the same purposes.  Since I don't have a paid account with Thinglink (or the talent) I could not do what Kevin did, so I used my free cMapTools account and created the concept map shown above. 

Each graphic on the cMap comes from a project done by one of the many interns who work on the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC project. Below each graphic you can find one or more links that open blog articles and/or videos that show the project, or show how the project was created and how I coached the interns along the way.

As I spent time last week reviewing work interns had done to collect images and links for the cMap I was reminded again of the immense talent of the students who worked with me.  More than half came from South Korea and Hong Kong, while most of the others were from Chicago area universities.

Much of the work being done in these on-line communities focuses on "cultivating connections" and "strengthening networks".  My goal is to draw people from the non-school #tutor #mentor, youth and workforce development and anti-poverty ecosystems together in similar on-line communities...and to connect them with the people and networks I'm already following.

As participation grows I hope to recruit a few people from different places who will spend time building their own understanding of what I've been trying to do. I hope some then begin to duplicate my own 25 year history, by creating libraries of content, and recruiting students from as early as middle school to spend time reading, reflecting, hacking and re-making work that I and my interns have done, to mobilize the time, talent and dollars of more people to help kids born or living in high poverty areas get the extra adult support they need to not only move successfully through school, but to have help moving into adult lives with jobs and careers that enable them to raise their own kids in any place they choose.

In many of the links on the cMap, like this one, I show how interns created their own projects after reading PDF essays, or blog articles, that I've written.   That represents more than 1000 articles, a mountain of content and ideas, that educators and social innovators from all over the world could draw from.

Throughout this and other articles I've included #hashtags with links to Twitter.  If you open these and scroll through past Tweets, you'll open yourself to a wide network of people and ideas.  For instance, here's a Tweet Kevin posted to draw attention to one of the projects in the Alchemy Lab.

A starfish in the Alchemy Lab? Of course, if it leads to a poem by @inspirepassion. And, yes, if the poem is giffed up. We’re surfacing media in the #netnarr Alchemy Lab, and you can wander amidst the words of the shelves at any time: https://t.co/b2W1oiR53O Doors always open. pic.twitter.com/TQK5YAkfsi

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) May 26, 2018

Note:  Due to people like Kevin leaving Twitter hundreds of my past articles will have a "not found" message. Fortunately, the text still appears.

In another cMap I've been aggregating links to Twitter conversations I've been following.  My vision is that at some point in the future I could find Tweets within each of these groups, pointing to my articles and work interns have done with me in Chicago, with new visualizations, videos, articles, etc. that apply those concepts in Chicago neighborhoods, or in neighborhoods throughout the world.

I'm not sure how much value this cMap will have in the future, unless their is a dramatic reversal in ownership and operations at Twitter. 

Furthermore, while my articles focus on helping kids living in poverty connect with extra adults and learning via organized non-school programs, this graphic visualizes a wide range of complex problems that need to be concurrently addressed in Chicago and throughout the world.

The "how do we do this" needs many people's ideas and what better way to communicate those than through the type of work Kevin is describing and that I've been trying to do.

Finally, if you are re-making and hacking the ideas I share, let me know. In the lower right corner of the intern map, you'll find this map, shown below, which I'm using as another 'museum' that showcases others who are already helping share Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC ideas.

I don't find enough people writing about my work. Yet, I keep encouraging alumni and others to take ownership and carry this effort into the future. 

Share the link in the comments section or on social media. You can connect with me on many platforms. Open this page to find links to each. 

--- end 2018 article w 2024 comments ----

Thanks for reading my posts, and for sharing them with others.

If you find value in what I'm sharing please consider a gift to support my 78th birthday - see this page

Or a contribution to my annual "Fund the T/MI" campaign - see this page.

This helps me keep my library and ideas on line for another year.

Wicked Problems. Getting 'Everyone" in the Room. Who cares?

For more than 40 years I've been trying to collect ideas and information that helped me be a more effective tutor/mentor, a more effective leader of a volunteer-based program, and to help well organized, mentor-rich youth programs reach k-12 kids in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.

You may have read what I just wrote, but did you understand it the way I hoped you would?

I've been creating visualizations since the 1990s to try to create a shared understanding of the ideas and strategies that I was producing via the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and the single youth tutor/mentor program I was leading in Chicago.

These are embedded in almost every article that I've written on this blog since 2007 and in PDF essays I started creating in the late 1990s. You can also see them in print newsletters from the 1990s.  Below is a screen shot from my page on Pinterest, showing how I've aggregated some of my graphics on that site.

You can also do a web search for "Tutor/Mentor Connection" using Google or another platform, then look at the images feature. Many of the images you'll see were created by myself, or one of the interns who worked with the Tutor/Mentor Connection between 2006 and 2015.  You'll see maps that date back to 1994, created by volunteers and part time paid staff (when money was available for this).

One of the graphics you'll find is the one at the right, created by an intern from South Korea in 2011.  In this article you can see the original version of this graphic, created in the 1990s to visualize the T/MC's goal of connecting a growing number of people to information they could use to help individual tutor/mentor programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago, and to help each program constantly innovate better ways to help youth move through school and into adult lives.

On LinkedIn this morning I found a video by Marv Weisbord, a business consultant, that talks about evolution of business problem solving process since early 1900s. In the last eight minutes he talks about "getting everyone in the organization in a room to make a chart on the wall showing everything that has to happen for this system to improve."



He describes a point in the problem solving process where a problem is identified that no one in the room has a solution for.  He says, "They stop the process and ask "Well, who knows?" Then go out to try to find that person."

He concludes the video describing the evolution of group dynamics, or "getting everyone involved to improve the whole" and talking about how important this is in trying to solve some of the complex problems facing the world in coming years.

Read 11/14 article

This is the idea I've been focusing on since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. I use the analogy of the hospital operating room, as the forum with "everybody in the room".  As long as the people doing the operation know all they need to know, they don't need anyone else to join them. However, when a situation arises that they don't have an answer for, someone from the audience can say "I know" and be invited to join the team on the floor. If a question arises that no one in the room can answer, someone can say "I know someone who knows this. I'll bring them into the conversation."

At some point a question arises that has never been asked before. Then someone might say, "I'll do the research, and when I find an answer, I'll bring it to you."

I saw the Tweet below on my Twitter feed.

Check out the #DSMTweCon network analysis and related hashtags that have been used. You can see the variety of disciplines being discussed. @SocioVizNet pic.twitter.com/N3Zc3Yr32m

— DSMOtago (@DSMOtago) July 25, 2018

When Marv Weisbord, or anyone else, talks about "getting everyone in the room" I'm asking, "how do you know who is in the room, or who is missing?" 

One Section of T/MC Library

That should be part of the information we're collecting.  It's part of the knowledge based I've been building since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. Here's one page where I point to network analysis ideas.

In my introduction I wrote that I started creating visualizations because I feel that people who listen to what I say, or read what I write, have a mental picture, based on their own experiences, that may be different than what I'm trying to communicate.

Below is a presentation I created in early 2000 as "No Child Left Behind" was becoming the national education policy of the USA.  It illustrates how people have different mental pictures when the words "tutor and mentor" are used. Creating a shared  understanding is one step toward building solutions and long-term commitment to implementing those solutions.

Defining Terms. Tutoring. Mentoring. by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

I have been involved in this work for more than 40 years and have spent part of the past 25 years focusing on ways to get more people involved in helping build and sustain mentor-based youth and workforce development programs in all high poverty areas.

I've built a huge library of ideas.  I've created several hundred visualizations, like this "village" graphic, representing the range of people who I feel "need to be in the room" innovating ways to reach kids in every high poverty neighborhood with a range of actions that help each one move safely and successfully through school and into adult lives.

"It takes a Village to Raise a Child" - who is helping?

In the final portion of his video, Mr. Weisbord talks about "creating images of potential" rather than focusing on what's wrong, and how to fix it.

Maybe my maps and graphics are "images of potential".  What do  you think? 

I've never had enough resources and talent to ask and answer all of the questions that need to be asked, or to mobilize more than a few of "all" who need to be involved.

I'm now looking for a way to share what I've learned in a consulting role, or through partnerships with one or more universities who might carry this work forward in future years.  If you're interested in helping, or having a conversation, just reach out to me with a comment, or by connecting with me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIN.

Understanding and solving complex problems - SDGs, Violence, Learning

View here

I've been using the Internet to collect and share ideas since the mid 1990s.  I created the cMap at the left to show some of the Twitter conversations I follow, where I learn, share and connect with others.

This week in the #nt2t (New Teachers to Twitter) and #EngageMOOC (Engagement in a time of Polarization) chats, it was reinforced that unless you spend time in these groups, you won't build a comfort level and the learning that is available to you. I offered that "time" is measured in years, not in hours per day.

View here

Another group I've followed since 2012 is the #clmooc (connected learning).  As a result I have begun to follow blog articles of a few people I've met, such as Kevin Hodgson, a middle school teacher in Western Massachusetts.

At the right is a screen shot I took from an article Kevin posted this week, with an open invitation for readers to join the #NetNarr Alchemy Lab .

Keven writes "the first step is to play the invitation".   I did, and I hope you will, too.

View here

Just before reading Kevin's article I browsed my LinkedIn page and saw this article about the United Nation's Sustainable Global Development Goals.

I followed the link to this page, which describes some of the challenges we're facing to reach the 17 UN SDG goals by 2030.  The screen shot at the left shows the web site where these challenges are visualized. The first one is that too few people actually know about the SDGs.

Animation created by Intern

Now, if you look at the #clmooc home page, and view past articles I've written about #clmooc and #moocs, you'll see that I've been trying to nudge them to devote some of their creative projects to communicating ideas and strategies I've been creating since 1990s, via their own visualizations and social media networking.

If you look at my graphics you'll see #maps, used to focus attention on all places where help is needed and #visualizations showing that many types of support are needed, in EACH PLACE, for many years. Building and sustaining public will is essential to that and aligns with the goals and strategies for achieving the SGD goals, too.

Below is a cMap that includes several visualizations, that show a focus on place (maps), process, and the need to build and sustain public will. Many people need to help make this happen.

Planning needed - view cmap here

Visit this page and you can see how interns working with me in Chicago from 2005 to 2016 created visual interpretations of ideas I launched on blog posts and PDF presentations.  Then, visit the glesi.org page shown in the screen shot above.  You'll see that their first solution is "raise global awareness of the SDGs and solutions we already have".  Then they show examples of raising awareness.

If you follow #clmooc on Twitter or view the articles on the #clmooc home page, you'll see a constant encouragement to "hack" work started by one person to create something new. I did that with this school bus graphic, which was first created by Melvina Kurashige, who lives in Germany.  I also did it with the SDGs graphic shown above.

The school bus graphic is an invitation to others to "get on the bus" and create their own visualizations of problems and solutions. "Stay on" means that you need to do this over, and over, maybe for many years.

In many of the groups I follow (view the hashtag map), I'm connecting with educators, organizers of technology groups, youth program leaders and intermediaries who work with many organizations, which means that students in classrooms all over the world could be creating their own visual interpretations of what I and others are sharing, and communicating these to their world...every day!

View this Tweet - here

Imagine if students throughout the US and the world were creating strategy visualizations on a daily and weekly basis, drawing attention to a problem and showing paths to solutions. What if volunteers from different industries were helping them learn new ways to communicate ideas, or to build their skills? Or if they were following and learning from the same Twitter groups I follow? 

Maybe we'll see that in student efforts to reduce gun violence in America, which is represented in this Twitter post.

I've created hundreds of visualizations since the mid 1990s. You can view some on my Pinterest page and others can be found by doing a Google search for "tutor/mentor".  I've embedded graphics in more than 1000 blog articles since 2005 and in presentations on Scribd.com and Slideshare.

I hope these are starting points for the work others do to draw attention and build solutions to the problems we face in this world.  I hope some people will reach out to help me do these better, or to create their own interpretations.

There's much to be done.


12-3-2018 update - Here's an article titled "17 Sustainable Development Goals: Which one is the Most Important?" which asks some important questions and points to Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development" as most important.    click here

7-27-2020 update - Here's article titled "Five things business can do" to achieve Global Sustainable Development goals (SDGs).  click here

Steps to the World we Want

I've been listening to the live-stream of the KennedyForum today and yesterday I viewed a lot of Tweets and FB post related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this morning's KennedyForum session the moderator asked "What's next? What's the follow up?" 

I hope you'll take time to view and think about the steps I feel need to be followed to create the world we want for our children and grandchildren, and for children growing up throughout the world.

First create a concept map, or blueprint, showing work needed to be done that leads to the problem you focus on being solved in many places.  In my case, I focus on helping kids from birth to work, so the cmap below shows supports kids need at every stage.

open map - click here

You can start creating these blueprints with a blank sheet of paper. As you think of more that needs to be done, add it to your graphic. At some point you might want to use a concept mapping tool, like cMapTools, or Kumu, to share your ideas via the Internet.

Next build a database showing organizations in your community who are already involved in doing this work. 

List of programs- click here   Map of Intermediaries - click here

I've been building a database of Chicago non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs since 1993 and plot this on maps showing where programs are located and where they are most needed, based on indicators like high poverty, health disparities, poorly performing schools, etc. 

I've also been building a concept map showing others who focus on helping youth in Chicago. All of these organizations need to be talking and exchanging ideas with each other, on an on-going basis.

Create maps showing related issues.
While I focus on building youth serving programs I realize that there are many other issues that contribute to poverty and represent challenges to youth and families.  That's what the concept map at the right intends to show.

I combined this map with a graphic showing the United Nations' Global Development Goals. You can see it in this article.  This illustrates that the problems we focus on in Chicago are problems to people in many parts of the world. Our source of solutions, support and resources can come from anywhere.

There is a universe of information available about these issues and the organizations working to try to solve some of them. It's on the Internet. It's in local public libraries. It's in book stores.  One of our challenges is motivating people to find time on an on-going basis to read this information and then discuss it with others.  I wrote about this last week.

Generate resource flow.
Then we need to find ways to draw volunteers, operating dollars, ideas and other needed resources on an on-going basis to every program and organization in our database.

EVERY PROGRAM

That means we need to help the great programs seving people in some places get the resources to stay great. We also need to help less well organizations in different places get the resources and ideas they need to become great.

Every neighborhood needs a full range of great programs just like contractor and worker involved in a building project needs to have the right skills and be paid to do their work.  

It's when we have great programs in more places that we begin to see stories showing how kids who have been part of these programs are now adults with jobs, raising their own kids, and hopefully, helping others overcome the problems they face.

This takes time. It takes many years for an organization to become great at what it does and it takes up to 20 years to help a youth move through school and into a first jobs. For some it take even longer.

It starts with gathering information showing where the problem is most concentrated and what work people are already doing in different places to try to solve the problem. The cMap below shows how I share some of what I've put in my web library. 

open map - click here

For every issue that contributes to poverty, inequality, social injustice, etc someone needs to be aggregating information, showing what they do, and what others do, then be sharing that the way I've been trying to do, so others don't need to spend time searching for ideas, but can spend that time reading, reflecting and connecting with others, with the goal of putting good ideas to work in more places.

The most difficult step in doing this work is pointing people in your network to others doing similar work. That includes pointing donors in your network to others who need the same help you do.

So far, very few take this role.

If you're one of those doing this work, share your link in the comment box and let's connect. Let's at least follow each other on social media and "like" and "re-Tweet" posts we each share. That's a first step of helping each other.

I've been writing this blog since 2005, so there are a lot of articles focusing on this work. Take some time to read them. Share them. Re-write them. Or reach out and help me do it better.

If you like what I write, and value the information I collect and share, make a contribution to help me keep doing this work. click here

Innovating at the World Wide Coffee Shop

Today in my Twitter feed my friend Simon Ensor, a university professor in France, who I met via the Connected Learning MOOC, #clmooc, posted this article, talking about how he was interacting with people throughout the world.  In the article was the TED talk that I'm showing below.  I hope you'll take time to view it.



In the TED talk the speaker, Steven Johnson,  talks about the English coffee house as a meeting place and spark for innovations that fed the Age of Enlightenment that stretched from 1715 to 1785. He finishes with a story about how a mid 1950s lunchtime conversation of two scientists led to GPS technology that we use every day to find a coffee shop near us.  In one part of the video he talks about how innovation is encouraged by allowing "those with hunches to connect with other people's hunches".

Don't know what I'm talking about? Watch the video. 

Simon's article talks about how difficult it is to engage in conversations with people who we pass in our daily lives and how he has been connecting with people like myself in on-going conversations via the Internet.

His article resonated with me, as many of them do.

I have a stack of business cards in front of me that I've collected over the past few months, and years, representing people I've met via various Chicago events. I've followed up with email and invited most to "have coffee and share ideas" with me, if they are interested.  Some do. Most don't. And even when we do meet, it's like a "one cup stand", not followed up with on-going connections that allow people to share "hunches" and connect with "other people's hunches" in ways that lead to new innovations in how we provide support to youth and families living in poverty, and how such on-going support might lesson the violence in our cities....while providing many other benefits.

I've been attending #ChiHackNight Tuesday evening sessions for a couple of years, and visit their Slack page daily to interact with participants.  Yesterday Isaw mention of this article from the SouthSideWeekly, which is reviewing a "Chicago at a Crossroads" event held recently to brainstorm solutions to violence in Chicago.

In it's critique of last week's event, the article said

The Times “live event,” coming nearly a year after the Memorial Day package, fell short in the same way its coverage did: its assemblage of voices offered no surprises and did little to push the fight against violence forward. After treating themselves to finger food in the venue lobby, its hundred-or-so well-dressed, mostly white attendees went home no closer to solving the gun violence crisis than they were when they arrived, and the perspectives presented on stage went more or less unchallenged. 

I've attended far too many events like this, with high profile talking heads on stage sharing ideas while several hundred in the audience listen. Maybe a few questions get asked. But there's no real interaction. And few event organizers create on-line spaces for participants and speakers to interact following the event.

The "It Takes a Village" concept map above shows my belief that people from all sectors need to be engaged in on-going efforts to reduce the poverty and isolation that feeds the violence we face in Chicago and other cities. In this article I expand on that idea.


The concept map at the right shows sections of the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library, which I started building even before I knew the Internet was a tool. I point to more than 2000 links, organized into four sections, with information and ideas anyone could use to build a deeper understanding of poverty, and to see work being done in some places that could be borrowed and applied in other places.  

Each link represents a group of people who I'd like to be meeting on an on-going basis in a "virtual" coffee shop of ideas and interaction.

When we think of the coffee house as a  meeting place, I feel there's just no realistic way that any of us can meet with more than a tiny fraction of people and ideas, if that's the only format available to us.  I've justified the time I spend on-line since 1998 by the fact that I can meet more people, and have deeper interactions over a period of years than is possible through face-to-face meetings.  We can not only connect with more people, but we can create gardens of ideas, such as our blogs and web libraries, that people from our immediate neighborhood and community, as well as people from around the world, can harvest for their own inspiration and application.

Unfortunately, the trade off is that I meet less often with people in Chicago who are part of this "village".

While I constantly say to people I've met in Chicago, "Let's do coffee and get to know each other", that just does not happen nearly as often as I'd like.  At the same time, while I have conversations with Simon in France, Terry in Kentucky, Kevin in Massachusetts and others from many other places, too few of the people working to help kids in Chicago are in these conversations.

It seems like Chicago is a hub for technology innovation but too many don't use this medium for networking, brainstorming and sharing ideas.  

I keep trying to change that. I'm inspired by people and ideas I keep meeting on-line.

#ilgive launching spring day of giving - May 31 - are you benefiting?

Based on the overall success of its November Giving Tuesday event, Forefront is launching a spring day of giving, on May 31, 2016. A kick off webinar is scheduled for March 31 at 9am CST.

I wrote about this on November 30, 2017 asking if "all Chicago Youth Organizations Filled their Funding Tanks on Giving Tuesday".

Forefront has been very open and transparent about this event, so the list of participating organizations and the amount each raised, and the number of donors for each, is available, on this page.

The numbers show that of 413 participating organizations, only 7 raised more than $50,000 and only 52 raised over $10,000.  237 organizations raised under $500 for the day, and out of this, 117 raised less than $200.

While I recognized a few Chicago are tutor/mentor programs from my list of nearly 200 organizations, the most successful was Tutoring Chicago (which I led from 1975-1992), which raised close to $13,000.

67 organizations raised less than $100.

That does not put much gas in the tank or fuel very much tutor/mentor program activity.

This does not mean the campaign is a bad idea. It means there needs to be greater innovation to draw funds into more organizations, and to get more organizations involved.  The graphic below is one that illustrates the need for year-round communications, drawing volunteers and donors to youth serving organizations in every poverty neighborhood of the Chicago region, and the state.

It also means more programs need to build a dedicated, enthusiastic, volunteer base and long-term history, which is what TutoringChicago and a few other organizations have done.

When I started leading Tutoring Chicago in 1975 I was also in the beginning stages of a retail advertising career with the Montgomery Ward Corporation, which hosted the program at its Chicago headquarters.  In 1974 the program stated the school year with 100 pairs of 2nd to 6th grade kids and adult volunteers, 90% of them from Wards. However, the program was loosely organized and more than half of the volunteers dropped out by the end of the year without being replaced.  By 1990, the year we turned the organization into a non profit, called Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc., we had 300 volunteer pairs, and we grew from the beginning of the year to the end.

Why? Because of program organization and volunteer support. We created a program that people wanted to participate in.  Only 10% of these volunteers were from Wards. 90% were from nearly 100 companies located in the Chicago region. We had a team of more than 15 volunteers coming to the Near North location from the AT&T location near Naperville!  As Wards had downsized starting in the late 1970s, and closed its Catalog business, many of the volunteers went to other jobs, but they continued to come to the tutor/mentor program. Within a few years, they were bringing their friends and co-workers.

We turned the organization in to a non-profit in 1990 and started raising money, so I could lead the program full time, and we could hire staff. Our volunteer numbers grew to 550 by May 1992 and youth served grew to 440.  More than 60 of the programs core leaders were volunteers, organized into functional teams similar to those working in the Montgomery Ward corporate office, who supported 400 stores throughout the country.

Chicago SunTimes, 10-92

I left the CGTP program in Oct. 1992 and with a few volunteers created a new program serving older youth who had aged out of the CGTP program at the end of 6th grade. We started in January 1993 with 7 volunteers and 5 teens in 1993 and by 1997 had more than 80 pairs actively participating. Due to space limitations we kept this annual number through 2011 when I left the organization.

In 1993, we also created the Tutor/Mentor Connection, with a goal of  helping volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in every high poverty neighborhood of the Chicago region.  I continued to apply the ideas learned from working in the corporate headquarters of Wards, and leading one volunteer-based program, in an effort to help many programs grow in many places.  However, I also began to build a library of links to other programs, and other thinkers, so that people in my own program, and in all other programs, could find ideas from more people and organizations than just myself, and my own tutor/mentor program.

I never had consistent support from city leaders and Wards went out of business in 2000.  The last 17 years, starting with the dot-com bubble's burst in 2000, and the 9/11 tragedy, made it more and more difficult to obtain consistent, on-going funding. It also resulted in leadership and staff changes in many of the organizations that I had been building relationships with in the 1990s.  I formed the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC  in 2011 to continue to support the strategy, but have not found a way to finance the work that needs to be done.

Others, have stepped in as intermediaries, covering a broader based of non-profits, like Forefront, or covering a narrower part of the Tutor/Mentor Connection's vision, like a few others are doing. However, I have 40 years of ideas and experiences, which I continue to share via blog articles, on-line presentations and one-on-one conversations and in a monthly email newsletter.

I'd love to share these ideas with others who are working to help kids living in poverty have mentoring paths to adult lives, and jobs, free of poverty.  I also seek others to help me do this work, as I suggested in this article about a "do over" for the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Contact me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIN.

If we don't learn from mistakes of the past we are certain to repeat them.

In November of 2016 I began reading a book written 2400 years ago, Thucydides' history of "The Peloponnesian War" which traced 23 years of war between Athens and Sparta and other Greek city states.  As I read the book, my understanding was increased by reading scholarly comments on Zenpundit.com by others who were reading the book at the same time.   I used my yellow marker to highlight passages that I felt relevant to 2017 and later transferred some of these to a Hackpad, which I used to write my own summary, which was posted here.

Then today, I viewed this ESRI storymap, about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2.  It's a powerful story of a mistake and injustice made in the past.

Earlier today I saw a post on my Twitter feed, saying 

"If we can change our worldview, we can change the future". 

That was a post by Harold Jarche @hjarche and drew my attention to a video titled "Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview".  As I started watching I wanted to take notes and decided to put the video on Vialogues, so I could comment as I viewed the video, and so others could do the same.



At the 12:06 point in the video the narrators begin to show how behavior is influenced and modified by the environment around us.  At the 18:26 point in the video the 1970s Stanford Prison Experiment was discussed, which showed how easy it might be for American's (or others) to repeat the sins of Nazi Germany or of the Japanese Internment Camps.

If you look at the notes I posted the Thucydides hackpad, you'll see a link to an article titled "State of Power: All Change or No Change. Culture, Power and Activism in an Unquiet World."  Within that is another article titled "There is no such thing as Western Civilization" (referred to a "Plato to Nato" in the host article).

From T/MI network building article

I read these and I hope some of you take the time to do the same. We're at a crossroads. It will take the efforts of a few passionate, dedicated people, to identify problems and innovate and implement solutions.  These people must find ways to connect with others, locally and globally, who are working toward similar goals.

This Building Networks of Purpose PDF is one of may that illustrate how this has been my goal for almost 20 years.

In the current political climate there are many, myself included, who fear that in a few years, in the worst case scenario,  many of us might be residing in new US based internment and concentration camps.  In an even worse case, we might tip the balance of nature and destroy the environment, and our ability as a human race to survive.

Neither of these is pre-destined.

If you're at a university, or considering making a major gift to a university, consider establishing a Tutor/Mentor Institute on your campus.  These two PDF show goals of such an effort.

* Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection - click here
* University Tutor/Mentor Connection. A Vision. - click here

Dig Deeper into Tutor/Mentor Ideas and Articles

I've been writing this blog since 2005 and began putting ideas on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site in 1998 via embedded PowerPoint presentations. Earlier than that I was putting these graphics in printed newsletters.

This represents a lot of information, and few people are willing to make the time to read, digest and share the ideas. Thus, one strategy I've used is to engage interns from various colleges in short, or long, periods of study which results in presentations that they create to interpret what they read.  You can see the image shown above with a collection of other presentations on this page.

The inspiration for my articles and graphics has come from my own experiences in leading a tutor/mentor program in Chicago, as well as from how I'm continually connecting and learning from others. The web library that I've aggregated over the past 30 years is really a collection of links to people and ideas that I've found valuable, and that I feel others would also find useful.

Finding ways to motivate others to dig into this information and then share what they are learning with others has always been the big challenge. When I can, I try to point to others who are already doing this, as an example of what I feel many others can do.

Below is a screen shot of a video created last week by Terry Elliott, a college professor from Western Kentucky, who I first met in 2013 via an on-line Connected Learning, #clmooc.

Over the past couple of weeks Terry introduced me to an RSS feed aggregation called Inoreader. He first mentioned this on a Twitter message and when I asked for help understanding it, he created a video, which he then posted on Vialogues (no longer available) so I could ask questions and he could respond. Then he created this blog article to show several different uses of Inoreader.

A year ago I did not know anything about on-line annotation and Terry was the one who introduced me to this at that time.  In this Jan. 2016 article I share this introduction to annotation.  And in this Feb 2016 article I show many ways that Terry and others who I've met online are expanding my range of ideas.

What's even more important is that Terry has been expanding his own understanding of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC over the past four years and he is sharing this understanding with members of his own network via the blog articles he writes and our interactions on Twitter, Facebook and similar spaces.

Here's another example. When Terry introduced me to annotation last January I suggested that this would be a way for myself and others to share thinking from books and PDF articles we had read in the past.  I suggested that we look at a 1992 report from The Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, titled Redefining Child and Family Services: Directions for the Future.  

This was one of the primary resources that I used to show why the Tutor/Mentor Connection was needed and what it was going to do.

We were not able to do that then, but in the past month we were able to load a 1995 update and use Hypothes.is to add comments in the margins. Here's the link. Take a look.

Had more people adopted and supported the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies from 1993-2016 I feel that there would be more supports in places helping kids in high poverty Chicago neighborhoods move safely from pre-school to jobs and careers and the strategy might have spread to other cities.

Part of the reason I did not get that support is that too few people actually knew the Tutor/Mentor Connection existed or what it was trying to do...because I did not have the tools now available to share my ideas, and did not have people like Terry Elliott, helping me build understanding and awareness in more places.

Poverty and inequality are still entrenched in Chicago and America. Thus, it's not too late for people to dig into these ideas and look for ways to apply them locally and globally.

Since I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I've encouraged colleges and high schools to adopt the T/MC strategy, with students doing the same work I do, but focused on the geography around their university.  This article from June 2015 shows that vision.

Over the past twenty years many people have done what Terry Elliott is doing, but few have done it consistently.  I created the concept map shown below as one way to aggregate links to people like Terry, so others could see what they are writing about, and connect with them, not just with me.

Anyone can take this role. The more who do, the greater will be the visibility and application of these ideas.  If you do start using your blog, videos or web site to share and interpret the ideas on my blog and web sites, send me a link and I'll add you to the map.

If you want to set up a student involvement project modeled after the T/MC I'd love to help you do that. 

Thanks to all who inspire my work on a daily basis by how you spend time networking and sharing your own ideas.

Solving Complex Problems. No One Promised "EASY"

Last week I posted an article under the headline of  "Want to Make A Difference? Spend Time in Deeper Learning"  and pointed to a "How to Help the World" chart created by a group in the UK.

Over the past couple of days I came across an article with the Periodic Table, re-mixed, to show 90 issues that challenge our well-being, locally and globally.

The article says this chart was created by "A 17-year-old Indian school girl who came up with an imaginative way to remember all the elements on the periodic table for her science class. She decided to recreate the periodic table to highlight 90 global issues, using the acronym of each element to highlight a particular problem."

Read the article and look at the issues she includes.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in Chicago in 1993 to try to pull people together to help build and sustain mentor-rich non school  programs helping kids in poverty areas move through school and into jobs and careers.  I started writing this blog in 2005 and many articles, like this, share maps and graphics, that focus on how we get from "here to there".

I encourage others who talk about problems to spend some time with a pen and paper and try to scratch out their own master plan, then share it on-line as I do.

I created the graphic at the right in the 1990s, to recognize that there are many different issues that need to be solved, in Chicago and in other places around the world. Each needs a network of people with various talents and civic reach who are dedicating their time, talent and dollars to solving that problem.

The Periodic Table created by our Indian school girl just emphasizes how many different issues there are which require the involvement of many people, over many years and in many places.

My goal is to find just a few people who focus on the same strategies that I focus on. With the right mix of talent, and deep commitment, we can change the world....or at least have a small impact.

While I'm in Chicago, the third largest city in the US, I've found it really difficult to connect with other people who think the same as I do, and who are willing to commit their time, talent and dollars to working with me on the strategies I've developed.  Nor have I found many using maps and graphics on their own web sites, for their own organization, who focus on the same problem.

The article about the Periodic Table was shared by Sheri Edwards, an educator from Washington state, via a Connected Learning #clmooc Facebook page. I've written about this group before, showing how I've been connecting and building relationships since 2013 with educators from the US and the world.   I've been part of a Webheads in Action group of ESL educators from around the world since 2004.

Both of these demonstrate how people from different places can connect and build relationships and expand what they know, if someone keeps the group alive from year to year and if individuals are willing to devote their own personal time visiting, reading and connecting on an on-going basis

I emphasize this because while there may only be a few people in Chicago who might be interested in the ideas and strategies I share, in big cities around the world, there may be many others who are struggling to find attention and support for the same ideas.  I included this map from an Economist.com article, in this article on the MappingforJustice blog.

Every one of my articles, Tweets and Facebook posts is an invitation seeking some who will respond.  This graphic illustrates a goal of finding leaders from different sectors.  This talent map illustrates the same idea, with more detail.

I created this 4-part strategy map and this article to illustrate a problem solving strategy that I have been building since 1993. It starts with "what do I know about the problem? Then, "What can I learn from others?"

This strategy, or a version of it, needs to have owners who focus on each of the 90 global issues described in the Periodic Table map shown above. Such groups need to be forming on line, and in each of the major cities of the world, and in each country.

They need to be connected so that people can draw ideas from other sectors, and that people in different sectors can collaborate on building tools that can be used in each place, and in each sector.

This needs to be supported by champions and benefactors from around the world.

As I said at the beginning, this is not going to be easy. Yet, if we don't try, what future can we expect?