Learn from work of interns

Over the past three months I've had my Tutor/Mentor website upgraded which led to reformatting of the site's look and feel.  One group of articles that were affected were those showing strategy visualizations and videos produced by interns between 2005 and 2015.   

I had to rebuild these pages, which I finished this week.  

Now you can find one page of visualizations at this link.

And you can find videos and more visualizations on this page.

If you browse through articles posted on this blog since Michael Tam, an intern from Hong Kong, started it in 2006, you'll see many of these presentations.

You'll also see presentations like this, where I've encouraged high schools, colleges and universities to create a Tutor/Mentor Connection study and action program on their own campus.

The interns who worked with me spent time reading my blog articles and looking through my website, then created their own interpretations, using various forms of visualization.  They were building new skills while learning new ideas. They were actively helping share ideas that could help more youth living in areas of persistent poverty get on-going tutor, mentor and learning support that would help them through high school, college and into adult lives and careers.  

Their articles focus on Chicago. The last were done in 2015, 10 years ago. That means there is a lot of new content that could be reviewed.  Any university in Chicago or any other place could have students doing this same work, and could soon have a page on their website showing student work, just as I do.

I wrote an article titled "Tipping Points: Growing and Supporting New Leaders" a few years ago. In it I showed how universities could be building a new wave of leaders who work directly in youth serving organizations while training others to become more proactive in supporting nonprofit and social benefit organizations from their roles in business, professions, policy makers, etc. 

It's the type of article student learners could review and reproduce in ways that might influence more people to actually adopt the ideas!  

That's the goal.

I can be found on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Twitter (see links here).  I hope you'll connect with me.

If you appreciate what I share on my blogs and in the Tutor/Mentor library, please consider a contribution to help me pay the bills.  click here

Duplicate this work on university websites

For 10 years, between 2006 and 2015, interns from IIT in Chicago, and other universities, spent time learning about the work being done by Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), then sharing their understanding through a variety of visualizations.

The cMap below shows some of the work interns did.

Archive of work done by Interns from 2006-2015

As you wander through this cMap you'll also want to read this article, where you can find an even fuller list of interns and work they have done.

While there was a consistent flow of interns, they were not coming as part of a strategic plan of the university, to reduce poverty in areas where the university was located, or to support a pipeline of students moving from Pre-K through high school, college, then into jobs and careers.

Thus, you won't find a page on any university website with a collection of articles and intern work similar to what you see on this blog. Or on-going efforts, described in the visualization below, to draw people from the university community and its alumni, along with it's surrounding community, into on-going conversations aimed at "How can we do this better?". 

It does not need to be this way.  Anyone can use this blog as an archive, and a museum, and a teaching tool.  The ideas are as useful today as they were when each project was first created.

The ideas apply to any area with high concentrations of poverty.  The process applies to building a better understanding of any complex problem and mobilizing more people to be involved in creating on-going, long-term solutions.

How to start? Create an independent study program where a few students begin to dig into my blogs to learn what I do and ways the ideas can be part of an on-going university-based strategy, funded by one or more wealthy alumni.

I'll help you.  If you want, students can join the Tutor/Mentor forum on Ning, and I can coach them, just as I did with past interns.  

Or, we can connect on ZOOM, or on BlueSky, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

Use AI to understand and share Tutor/Mentor ideas

Below is a graphic I've shared for over 25 years. It encourages people to read my newsletters, blog articles, PDF visual essays, etc., then create new media that shares their interpretations with their networks, so more people become strategically engaged in building and sustaining programs that reach K-12 youth in high poverty areas with support and learning opportunities that help them through school and into jobs and careers.

If you browse through articles posted on this blog since 2006 you'll see many examples of interns taking this role. I continue to encourage high schools and colleges to set up formal programs where students learn to do this as part of an active community-building effort, focused on the area surrounding the campus where they are located.

Last week a retired college professor from Western Kentucky demonstrated this.  The graphic below is from a blog article he posted. Included in the article was a podcast where two people discuss the material Terry was reviewing. 

In his article Terry introduced me to an artificial intelligence tool called Google Notebook LM.  The podcast has a man and a woman talking about the information being reviewed. They sound real.  In fact, I had to ask Terry if they were real. No.

I tested this over the weekend, asking it to look at some of my blog articles.  Yesterday I asked it to look at two article I'd written in past years about the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday.  

I posted the notes created by this review in this article on the Tutor/Mentor blog.  In it, I included a link to the podcast where that material is discussed.

The podcasts have some inaccuracies.  They often over-state what I've been doing and add in extra thoughts that were not part of the blog articles being reviewed, and were not part of any work I've been able to do.  

Yet, they demonstrate a long-term goal, that groups of people would look at the information I share and start discussions that create a better understanding, and support actions that build and sustain youth-serving programs in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

I encourage you to test this out. On the www.tutormentorexchange.net website are links to blogs, videos, PDF essays, past newsletters, etc. that I've created since 1993. 

They were seen by too few people. You can bring them to life and to more people and perhaps create the movement needed that changes what communities, businesses, philanthropy and government does to make high quality, mentor-rich programs available in more places.

Share what you create with me on one of these social media channels. 

I continue to depend on contributions from a small group of people to keep sharing these ideas. Visit this page and add your support if you're able.