During the last two weeks of September, volunteer-based tutor and/or mentor programs across the country will be hosting orientations and training for volunteers and students in organized tutor, mentor and learning programs. By the first week of October most volunteers will have had their first meeting with students they are assigned to work with through the 2024-25 school year.
That was the what happened every year from 1975 to 2011 in the Chicago programs that I led.
Use the ideas and resources shared in this monthly newsletter to help you build and sustain mentor-rich, school and non-school, tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach K-12 youth in all areas of persistent poverty. These resources can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world.
Please share this so others in your city can find and use these resources!
If programs are able to provide adequate support and keep volunteers involved for multiple years, many will take on greater roles to help kids.
This graphic was created several years to show the potential growth of volunteers in organized tutor/mentor programs. Visit this Tutor/Mentor blog article and view the graphic, then look at animations created by interns to provide their own interpretation.
One of the reasons I'm passionate about volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs is that they connect people who don't live in high poverty areas with kids, families and schools that are in these areas. As volunteers learn more of the challenges many will do more to help the kids, their programs and their communities overcome these challenges.
Increasing the number of people who care is essential. That requires an on-going effort.
This won't happen unless individual programs have an on-going volunteer support and learning strategy in place with these goals in mind. When you view a program's website, see if there is an explanation of how they support and retain volunteers.
And, unless programs have on-going operating dollars to hire and retain staff, few will be able to provide the continuous support this strategy requires.
The second lesson from the article I'm sharing is that interns from Chicago universities spent time reading my article then created their own interpretation. This is an activity that could be duplicated in hundreds of schools, throughout the world, with the end result that more people become personally involved in trying to solve the problems facing people living in areas of persistent poverty.
Visit this Tutor/Mentor blog to see work interns did between 2005 and 2015. If you have students doing similar work, do you have a blog or website that shares their projects?
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Tips for volunteers and staff based on my own leadership of tutor/mentor programs
I led two tutor/mentor programs in Chicago between 1975 and 2011. I was a volunteer with a full time advertising job while I led the Tutor/Mentor program at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago from 1975 to 1990. That program connected 2nd to 6th grade kids from the Cabrini-Green public housing complex with workplace volunteers in weekly sessions that ran from 5:15 to 6:30 pm. In 1975 we had 100 pairs of kids and volunteers. By 1990 we had 300 pairs. We converted that program to a nonprofit in 1990 and I led it's first two years of growth, serving 440 kids and 550 volunteers by June 1992.
I left that program in October 1992, and with the help of a few other veteran volunteers, created a second program, to help kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade have continued support from 7th through 12th grade. We started our first sessions in January 1993 with 7 volunteers and 5 teens and grew each year. By 1998 we had 80 teens and 100 volunteers, and some of our fist teen members were graduating from high school. Due to space limitations we kept that enrollment number from 1998 to 2011.
I give this background to offer credibility to the lessons I share on the "How to start a program" page of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website, and in articles, like this one, on the Tutor/Mentor blog.
I learned much of what I know from other tutor/mentor programs, beginning back in 1973 when I first became a volunteer tutor/mentor. One reason I host a list of Chicago and national programs, and organized Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences every six months from May 1994 to May 2015, was to encourage other programs to share their strategies and learn from each other.
While I have not hosted a conference since 2015 I am on social media everyday, looking at information posted by other programs and trying to draw attention to those posts, so others connect and learn from each other. The need to learn from each other is on-going.
How are youth programs in your community sharing their strategies and networking with each other?
Become familiar with the on-line learning resources in the Tutor/Mentor Library.
The Homework Help concept map in the top graphic can be found at this link. Each node on the map has links to sections of the tutor/mentor library with a wide range of learning resources. Our role as volunteers, parents and leaders is to help students find and use these resources to achieve whatever life goals they aspire to achieve. Use your email newsletters, blogs, social media and bulletin boards to call attention to these resources.
The second concept map shows resources in the Tutor/Mentor library that program leaders, volunteers and donors can use to help on-going tutor/mentor programs grow.
Visit this Tutor/Mentor blog article and consider how you and your volunteers are learning from Internet libraries. Look at the "Cool Cash" program we tried at the Cabrini Connections program in 2008-09. Borrow some of the ideas. Share your own.
Below are resources to use. View latest links added to tutor/mentor library, click here
Recent Tutor/Mentor Blog articles that point to Tutor/Mentor Connection archived files:
(Do you have a blog? Share it on social media)
Remembering 9/11. How much sacrifice is enough? - click here
* Create a New Tutor/Mentor Connection - click here
* Chicago Youth Serving Organizations in Intermediary Roles - click here to view a concept map showing many organizations working to help improve the lives of Chicago area youth. Follow the links.
Resources & Announcements
(New additions are at top of this list)
* National Writing Project. Get your students involved - click here View this sample post on Twitter (X) - click here
* Explaining Achievement Gaps: The Role of Socioeconomic Factors - click here
* Addressing Wealth Inequality in America - click here
* Why Philanthropy Needs to Invest in Social Capital - click here
* ChiHackNight - remote civic technology meet-up; every Tuesday in Chicago - see weekly agenda
Thank you for reading.
While I try to send this only once a month, I write blog articles weekly. Throughout the newsletter I post links to a few of the articles published in the past month or earlier. I encourage you to spend a little time each week reading these articles and following the links. Use the ideas and presentations in group discussions with other people who are concerned about the same issues.
I encourage others to duplicate what I'm doing. Write a blog and share your own vision, strategy and challenges. Share your link and I'll add it to this list in the Tutor/Mentor library.
It took Thomas Edison more than 1000 tries before he invented a working light bulb. It will take extensive learning, innovation and effort to build strategies that reach youth in all poverty neighborhoods with programs that help more move successfully from birth to work.
Everyone who visits this web site is embarking on a journey of learning. The longer you stay involved the more you will know.
Then, to help you get started, you can view blog posts by interns who have worked with the Tutor/Mentor Connection since 2006. If you read some of these you'll see they all start the same way, with a conversation with Dan Bassill, founder of the T/MC and president of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, formed in July 2011.
If you read later articles written by these students, you'll see a growth in their understanding and an effort to share what they know with others. At this page you can see a list of visualizations. This page shows a wide range of strategy presentations done by interns. This blog focuses on work done by Interns since 2006.
Note: the Flash Animation presentations done from 2007-2011 no longer are viewable in current format, since Flash is no longer being supported by many browsers. Videos are being made to share this work.
That's the journey we hope thousands of people will take. Start your reading by looking at an article written by Michael Romaine, a Volunteer who joined T/MC in 2010 - Thinking like Google
This concept map shows the four sections of the information in the Links Library of the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. This video also describes the library.
The resource library is now hosted on this website. Enter the library at this link.
Our Vision: Because of the work we do, more youths born in poverty will start jobs and careers by age 25, and more volunteers will make a lasting commitment to tutor/mentoring.
Yes. There is a lot of information and it's difficult to navigate. Complex problems do not have simple solutions. As you spend time learning what's available you'll find many ideas and resources that can be applied in Chicago or any other city.
You can go through the information in any sequence you choose. I encourage people to think of my web sites as a huge shopping mall. The first time you visit you just walk the mall and peek into every store to see what's there. Then you go back later to investigate stores that you were more interested in. Some of these become your favorites and you repeat your visit over and over.
View this video to help you navigate the various sections of this web site.
For your assistance, this concept map is a "learning path" you can follow. This is the same learning path information, but communicated via a YouTube video format.
Why do we do this? We believe volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are the bridges that connect volunteers, donors and business leaders with the children, families and schools on the other side of the socioeconomic divide. However, we don't have all of the answers. When we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 we said "Let's try to learn every thing that is known about this problem, and about solutions that work in some places that could be working in other places if the money and volunteers were available."
Thus, while you can go to five or six different web sites hosted by the T/MC, you can go to more than 1500 other sites hosted by other organizations, universities, businesses and government. In addition, most of these sites were selected by the T/MC to be on our sites because they have libraries of links that point you to even more extensive networks of information. If you spent enough time in this network of web sites you could earn a Ph.D in this subject!!
This Web site is for:
leaders of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs
youth in tutor/mentor programs
volunteers
board members
business leaders
parents
donors
media
By exploring this Web site, and making a permanent resource for your own learning, innovation and decision making, we hope you and all visitors begin to understand where tutor/mentor programs are needed most, why they are needed, ways to get involved and approaches to improving existing programs.
We hope to connect you and a growing number of these stakeholders through an ongoing, dynamic exchange of ideas, and ultimately to improve the availability and quality of tutor/mentor programs throughout the world.
Tutor/Mentor Learning Network
