Blogs

I've been reading Curt Bonk's book titled the World is Open and have put in dozens of sticky notes on pages with links to on-line learning resources that he mentions.  I intended to go back and find these, one at a time, and add them to my own library on the Tutor/Mentor Connection site.

However, Curt's already done much of the work of building a list of resources. Visit this page and this page and you'll find resources that anyone can  use in their own teaching, mentoring, parenting and learning.

If you visit this page and begin to use some of the resources please post a comment to this blog sharing what you looked at and how you used it. Bonk's book focuses on "sharing" via the Internet. We can put the spirit of the book to work in our own efforts if many of those on the Tutor/Mentor Connection will share ways they are using the information he is sharing.

Reposted from  email I receive:

Mentor Michigan Census Reports Available

April 12, 2011: Mentor Michigan, a MENTOR affiliate, has now made the latest Mentor Michigan Census (MMC) available online.

This is Wave VIII of the census, which is a survey of organizations operating mentoring programs in the state of Michigan. It was conducted in the fall of 2010, and 137 organizations responded for a 58 percent response rate.

Among the findings of this survey:
*  Various academic outcomes are an area of focus for more than 80 percent of responding programs, including school-based programs. Within academics, improved attendance and grades/GPA are the highest priorities. Additional focus areas reported included pro-social skills and health and wellness.

* The biggest changes in demographics since the last survey were a 4 percent increase in mentees between 12 and 14, as well as a 4 percent decline in African-American youth served.

* The biggest improvements in registry-based screening procedures were for use of SafetyNET, which increased by 8 percent since the last survey. (SafetyNET was the highly-successful pilot program that allowed youth-serving organizations access to the nationwide FBI fingerprint database in screening potential volunteers and employees. SafetyNET ended March 31, and a bill to create a permanent successor to it has been introduced in both houses of Congress.)

* Wave VIII showed a small increase in mentor retention; however, the percentage of male mentors — new and returning — has decreased.

According to Mentor Michigan Director Amber Troupe, "The primary purpose of the MMC is to understand the scope and nature of mentoring and mentoring organizations in our state. Specifically, we aim to identify, count, describe and track mentoring organizations, programs, mentors and mentees; understand program components, processes, resources and needs; and encourage and support program evaluation."

"The more information we know about the mentoring programs we serve, the more help we can offer them toward becoming even more effective," noted MENTOR President and CEO Dr. Larry Wright.

To hear more about Mentor Michigan's MMC, Wave VIII, register for the free, online webinar being hosted by evaluator Bob Kahle this Thursday, April 14, at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/564339762. To access all current and past MMC reports, go to www.michigan.gov/mentormichigan/0,1607,7-193--110977--,00.html. For more information about youth mentoring in general, visit www.mentoring.org.

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Tutor/Mentor Connection comment: We would be doing this type of census for Chicagoland if the money were available. We'd use the information to support marketing that builds on strong programs and helps improve weak programs, while helping new programs grow where too few now exist.

This is a graphic that I include in many articles I write, illustrating the role individuals can take in reaching out to people they know to draw them to information we share on our web sites and to tutor/mentor program locations where they can be volunteers,  leaders, donors, etc.  I am speaking to a group of students from Governors State University tonight (4/5/2011) and at Loyola University  on Thursday (4/8/2011) and created this pdf essayto try to illustrate the ways they and others can help tutor/mentor programs grow.

While my mission and focus is on tutor/mentor program growth, these ideas can be applied to build more consistent and long-term support of organizations involved in any form of social problem solving where resources need to be consistently available in order for organizations to build the strength and knowledge to begin to have an impact on those issues.

I encourage anyone who reads this to share it. I also encourage you to create your own leadership essays so you can share your own thinking on these topics.  If you want to volunteer time and talent to help convert this idea to a video or a graphic animation we welcome your involvement.

I created this graphic last week to illustrate the progression of thinking that I've followed for the past 20 years.

I know from my own experiences and those of others, and from much reading, that connecting youth with caring adults can have a positive impact.

I also know that building and sustaining these adult-youth connections in high poverty neighborhoods is very difficult without some organizational structure to enable youth and adults to meet in safe places and without supportive mentor-leaders in place to support weekly interactions. Thus, finding the existing volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in any city, and finding ways to help them get the ideas, talent, resources, volunteers needed to operate and constantly improve would seem to be a good idea.

Once we agree that organized programs are a good idea, then if we plot locations of existing programs on a map showing poverty and other indicators of youth needing extra adult support, we can quickly identify neighborhoods with few or no programs.  It would seem that leaders in business, media, politics, philanthropy and other sectors would want to work together to help existing programs grow and to help new programs grow in areas that are without programs.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) which I started in 1993, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, which I formed in 2011, I'm trying to support all three levels of this thinking.   Browse the articles I've posted here, here, and here and in my blog to learn more about this thinking and to find ideas that you can apply to support these ideas in your own community.

Every day, youth in mentoring and tutoring program are setting goals and trying to reach them. Whether it’s earning an A in Biology, making the marching band, applying to colleges, or learning how to cook something other than grilled cheese, talking about goals is an important part of any mentoring relationship. Research from around the world has shown that youth with strong goals and strong goal-directed behaviors have the most positive development and the least negative outcomes. However, there are not many research-based tools out there to help mentors build these critical life skills in young people.

Over the past year, a team of researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts has worked to fill that gap. Dr. Ed Bowers and his team designed a set of tools that make talking about and eventually achieving goals through a mentoring relationship easier, more fun, and more effective in promoting youth’s positive development. We call this system Project GPS, and we’ve based it on the most cutting-edge research on youth development as well as feedback from youth-serving professionals from around the country.

Project GPS includes a comprehensive series of quick and easy measurement tools, known as rubrics. There are also nearly thirty fun activities, several inspirational videos of young people talking about how they achieved their goals, and much more.

Right now, Dr. Bowers and his team need mentoring programs to participate in an upcoming evaluation of Project GPS, which will provide each participating program with free access to the entire suite of tools, as well as valuable data regarding the goal-directed behaviors and positive development of the youth in your care. Project GPS can be adapted to work with the particular structures and objectives of different programs.

To find out more about Project GPS and how you can promote goal management skills in the youth in your program, email Mimi Arbeit at tuftsgps@gmail.com to set up an informational phone call.

Project GPS is a project of the Institute for Applied Research on Youth Development, directed by

Dr. Richard Lerner.