March 2023 Tutor/Mentor eNews

March 2023 - Issue 220

Finish the School Year Strong

As we near the end of this school year youth serving programs need to find innovative ways to keep students and volunteers engaged so they have a strong finish and momentum heading into the 2023-24 school year.

This monthly newsletter shares links to youth programs in Chicago and around the country with the goal that each program spends time learning from all others. That's a recipe for constant improvement.

Building awareness of these resources and motivating people to use them is an on-going challenge.

Encourage your volunteers, board members and supporters to help you find ideas you can use to support program operations and improvement. Do a search on Google, Bing or Duck Duck Go for "tutor mentor, plus one more word, like learning, planning, or collaboration. My websites show up among the first five to 10 listings.

The ideas and resources shared in this monthly newsletter point to a library of resources that can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world, to help mentor-rich youth programs thrive in all of the neighborhoods where they are most needed.

Encourage others in your city to find and use these resources!

Visit Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC Website

Where are you finding ideas to help you build stronger programs for youth in your city? What does the carrot represent in this graphic?

This newsletter and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC websites and blog article point to information that youth program leaders, donors, policy makers, businesses, etc. can use to fill high poverty neighborhoods with comprehensive, on-going, youth development and learning programs.

What do the carrot and rabbit represent? Ideas. Front runners. Innovators. People you can learn from.

I show this idea in this blog article.

I wrote about the Edison effect in this article.

Who is helping youth tutor/mentor programs grow in your city?

This map shows youth serving tutor and/or mentor programs in the Chicago region. View it in this article. Each organization has a unique history and story that shows who they are, what they do and who they serve. Ideally program websites would show this information and it would be shared regularly on social media in an effort to attract volunteers and donors needed to support on-going operations.

Some programs do this well. Others need help. Volunteers from communications industries and students from high schools and colleges could be telling stories of programs in different areas. City leaders could be encouraging this. Maybe the next Mayor of Chicago will take this role. Maybe Mayors in other cities already do this.

Do the Planning

What information should volunteers, parents, donors and media find on youth program websites?

How well do youth programs in your city communicate their history, strategy, successes and challenges on their websites? Do they use blogs to share info regularly? Is their enough information for volunteers, donors and/or parents to make an informed choice of helping them?

Take a look at the PDF essays in this blog article.

Ideas for innovation, collaboration, process improvement.

One section of the Tutor/Mentor library contains links to articles and websites that focus on collaboration, community building, knowledge management, innovation, mapping and process improvement.

These are resources that anyone in for-profit or non-profit organizations can use to support constant improvement. Open this link to view one section of this library.

Encourage your students to learn from these articles.

Steps to start and sustain a youth serving program.

I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975 to 2011 and in this section of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website I share PDF essays that anyone can use to start a new tutor/mentor program or help an existing one grow.

These same ideas can be applied to building and sustaining an intermediary network intended to help well-organized tutor/mentor programs reach k-12 youth in all high poverty areas of any city.

I'd love to see blog articles showing strategies other programs are using to start programs and keep them going!

It takes 20-25 years for each child to grow from birth to work.

Few cities have comprehensive support systems that help kids in every high poverty area make this journey safely and successfully.

I've been focusing on long-term support systems since starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago in 1993 and via blog articles written since 2005.

Open this link and browse through some of the articles that focus on building and sustaining youth tutor/mentor programs. Apply the ideas in your own city.

New resources on "misinformation and disinformation" added to library.

MisInfoDay is an event hosted by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. It's one of many important resources you'll find on their website.

I added the link to this section of the Tutor/Mentor library where you'll find a few similar resources and where I'll add more as I find them.

What do you know about ChatGPT and AI in education?

I'm part of a group of educators who are gathering information and will be exploring uses of AI and ChatGPT during coming months. Here's one Google doc where ideas are being shared.

Here's a blog article where I shared my first experiment with ChatGPT. Follow the #ETMOOC group on Twitter to see updates.

Below are resources to use to help youth in your community.

View latest links added to tutor/mentor library - click here

Recent Tutor/Mentor Blog articles:

Creating more luck for kids in high poverty areas - click here

Borrow from Lessons of Tutor/Mentor Connection - click here

What Youth Programs Exist in Your Area? - click here

Super Bowl, Tutoring and Mentoring - click here

Bookmark these Tutor/Mentor Resources

* Resource Library - click here

* Strategy PDFs by Tutor/Mentor - click here

* Concept Map library - click here

* Work done by interns - click here

* Political Action resources - click here

* Featured collections on Wakelet - click here

* Tutor/Mentor Institute Videos - click here

* About T/MI articles on blog - click here

* History of T/MC - T/MI articles - 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

* Google Analytics is changing. Are you prepared? Here's one article to read. click here

* Connect Illinois Digital Equity Coalition - click here

* Illinois Broadband Lab - click here

* MyChiMyFuture - Chicago youth programs map and directory. click here; visit the website - click here

* To & Through Project website - click here: Follow on Twitter - @UChiToThrough

* Center for Effective Philanthropy - click here

* Forefront -Illinois' statewide association of nonprofits, foundations and advisors. click here

* Brooklyn Public Library National Teen E-card. Makes books available to teens throughout USA - click here

* Chicago Mentoring Collaborative - click here

* Chicago Public Schools locator map - click here

* Chicago Health Atlas - click here

* Thrive Chicago collaboration - click here

* Chicago Learning Exchange - click here

* Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative - click here

* Incarceration Reform Resource Center - click here

* AfterSchool Alliance - resource center - click here

* Blogs on learning, education, fund raising - click here

* ChiHackNight - remote civic technology meet-up; every Tuesday in Chicago - see weekly agenda

About this newsletter.

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.

Encourage friends, family, co-workers to sign up to receive this newsletter. Click here.

(If you subscribe, don't forget to respond to the confirmation email).

Thank you for reading. Please help fund this work.

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