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[Daniel Bassill]

This graphic is just one of many I post here and here and here to illustrate ways that individuals, companies and groups of concerned citizens can learn from each other and apply that learning toward building and sustaining comprehensive long-term mentoring and learning programs that result in inner city kids starting jobs and careers in their mid-twenties, rather than being in jail, on probation, or just out of school and out of work.

If you can't join with me in this forum, join me in another, or start your own forum and invite me to join you. Together we can increase the number of people who are involved and engaged in making life different for kids living in poverty.

[Alice Mercer]

Daniel, this is a great idea, and I'll be sharing this site with others on my blog (http://inpractice.edublogs.org). I am a teacher at a Title One school that is on whole school free lunch (~85% of students in poverty). I am on the school Student Study Team (SST) which is where students who are behind and/or acting out are referred for services. Our site has a number of outside tutors who are not teaching professionals on campus. I am also the site coordinator for an SES (NCLB funded) after school tutoring program which uses credentialed teachers, but most do not teach at our site during the school day.

1. We have a lot of resources, and recruitment is not an issue now;
2. We are not always effectively using the tutors, which may not only not help kids now, but hurt recruitment later. Too much wheel spinning seems to be going on.
3. Communication is often lacking, and this is worsened with all the different resources.
4. It's not just the people, but the approaches that seem to be in silos, one group is just concerned with affective (emotional) domain, another with just the academic stuff. BUT, it seems like the SES tutoring which is just supposed to be 'academic' (prep 'em for the test 'mam), works better if you address social/emotional stuff, and don't just hand them release questions to work on. On the other hand, there are counseling interns who address the social/emotional stuff, but if the child is frustrated because they are two years behind grade-level, the source of that problem needs to be addressed directly.

These are things that I'm trying to wrestle around with. Hope this place can provide a sounding board.

[Daniel Bassill]

Hi Alice,

Thanks for joining this group and I hope you'll help bring others. I think of tutoring/mentoring as building a "village" of people who help kids succeed in school and move to jobs and careers. This means that the organizers of such programs need to build in long-term connectivity that keeps kids, volunteers and program connected to each other way beyond the first year of contact.

On my blog and web site I illustrate these ideas. One way to engage students in rich or poor communities, it to teach them to be researchers and communicators. Here's a presentation done for me last week by two students from Korea who are interning with me for one month.

This illustrates how young people can learn to create content and communicate it as advertising and on-line education so more people become involved in a social benefit effort. If they learn to put this content on central web hubs, and to participate in on-line idea sharing, they might also build a habit of using these sites as meeting and networking places in life long mentoring.

Imagine how that might reduce the isolation of poverty for many kids in many places.

[Alice Mercer]

Yeah, one of the best projects that kids did in SES tutoring was a video illustrating what they have learned in function graphing as a stop action video. This let them create. My population is a little younger than yours (K-6).

[Daniel Bassill]

Several groups have formed in the Tutor/Mentor Connection community. Now I encourage you to recruit members. These could be representatives of tutor/mentor programs in the areas served by these groups (e.g. Los Angeles, South Suburbs of Chicago, Brazil, etc.) or they could be employees and/ or leaders of businesses, churches, hospitals and universities with facilities in these areas.

Any tutor/mentor program who joins a group is encouraged to set up a profile, add photos, and do everything they can to show what their program does, why it is important, and how volunteers and donors can help them do their work.

If programs do this, and the groups attract people from businesses, churches, hospitals and universities, these stories will provide information that can be shared with people from these institutions, who will then have more information to use in making decisions on becoming volunteers or donors in the tutor/mentor programs who are telling their story on-line.

This only works if multiple programs begin to list themselves in the groups, and if we attract people from businesses, churches, hospitals and universities, which are sources of volunteers, donors, leaders, etc.

You can participate in one, or more group. Innovate ways to make this work for you and the youth you are trying to help.