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. 

Thank you to interns and universities

This blog was created in 2006 by Michael Tam, an intern from Hong Kong.  It has been used since then to introduce work from many different interns.  I cannot thank them enough for their help.

A few weeks ago I created a presentation to show how I've reached out to universities for their support over the past 30 years.  You can view it in this post on the Tutor/Mentor blog and this post on the Mapping for Justice blog.

My goal is that people who look at the presentation, or skim through past articles on this blog, will see the potential of creating Tutor/Mentor Connection type programs on college campuses where students duplicate this work, but as part of a long-term commitment to reduce poverty and inequality in communities where each university is located.  

My last article on this blog was titled "Adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection".    

As the first page in the above presentation says, "It just takes two or three people on a campus to launch a Tutor/Mentor Connection."  They could be helped immensely if a wealthy alum were to make a bequest to support such a program for 10 to 20 consecutive years.  

That could be YOU, or someone you know. 

I've been posting archives of newsletters written since 1993, which you can see in this collection on the Tutor/Mentor blog.  They show that the problems of the 1990s are still with us 30 years later.

Until more people say, ENOUGH, and devote time, talent and dollars to long-term efforts that help kids in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs, and help reduce the structural racism and other barriers that make this journey more difficult for some kids than for others, the problem will persist.

I hope you'll be one of those people.

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.  Find links on this page.

If you are able to make a contribution to help me pay the bills, please visit this page. 

Thank you for reading and sharing this article. 

Adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection

Over the past six months the monthly visit count on this blog has averaged over 8600. Prior to that visit count had usually been less than 500.  I'm not sure what is driving this growth, but I hope it is people from colleges and k-12 schools across America, and the world who are looking for on-line learning activities. 

Well, I've been sharing such an activity for more than 20 years. Maybe desperation will be the fuel for inspiration.

On-line learning

Below is an invitation I wrote in 2016.  As you read this (I hope) think of how students can work individually, or in teams, to learn what the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute has been trying to do since 1993. 

What am I talking about?
This blog was started in 2006 by Michael Tam, an intern from Hong Kong. Browse articles posted since then and meet all the different interns who have spent time at a computer, learning about the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, then sharing what they are learning through videos, animations, visualizations and/or blog articles. 

Follow the links in many articles to the group on the Tutor/Mentor Connection Ning site to see how I've coached interns since the late 2000s. 

Imagine your students doing this research and communications. Imagine a page on your web site sharing what they learn. Imagine you hosting ZOOM conversations where students and community members talk about what they are learning, like I did last week with students from Roosevelt  University.  Covid19 has highlighted the poverty and inequality in our country and in the world. 

Will we just talk about it, or will you create a student learning activity that creates current and future leaders, who map where the problem is, who is working to solve it, then creates on-going, student-generated, public education that draws more needed resources into each of these areas?

So here's what I wrote in 2016:

Here's a graphic that I created a few months ago in preparation for a meeting with some students and faculty at DePaul University in Chicago.

From top to bottom it illustrates a vision of creating youth serving organizations that help urban youth move more safely and successfully through school and into jobs and careers. It compares the planning to that involved in building tall sky-scrapers, where many talents are needed, much financing is needed, and where you work from the foundation to the top floor over a period of years.

The map in the middle illustrates that there are colleges and universities in different parts of Chicago (or other cities) who are full of student, faculty and alumni talent, and serve as anchor organizations able to support the growth of long-term tutor/mentor programs in the area surrounding their universities.

The last two graphics illustrate that while it takes daily effort by many people to build and sustain one, or many, youth serving organizations, this is just one issue that people are concerned with on a daily basis.,

Thus, part of the role of student teams on universities is to mobilize leaders who will focus their talent and resources on the youth development slide of the pie, while also connecting, sharing and drawing ideas from groups working on other problems, in other places.

Universities are critically important in this process because as we move through 2016 and into future years, there still is no body of knowledge that everyone draws from to build and sustain youth serving programs in high poverty areas that last for 10-30 years and show on their web sites the impact they have had over that many years.  Imagine if there were no thousand-year history supporting architecture, engineering and the building trades, but that anyone who wanted to build a building, first had to figure out what talent was needed, and then had to build training programs so the talent had the skills needed to build the building. Imagine them doing this while also trying to find the funding needed to develop the talent, and spread it to all the places where tutor/mentor "buildings" were needed.

I've created a huge library of ideas and information, with links to over 2000 other web sites, who each link to many thousand of additional web sites.  Working through this information will take years of study. Universities could make this a degree-earning process and provide manpower to support organization growth at the same time. Below is a presentation that outlines my goal. If you're connected to a university, or looking to put your name on a building at your alma mater, I hope you'll make this your mission.

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

I've written more than 1000 articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog since 2005, and tagged most of them so you can view multiple articles focused on a similar idea.  

--- end 2016 article ---

universities in Chicago

At the right is a map of Chicago, showing poverty areas, and university locations, created in 2008 by Mike Traken, who worked at the T/MC for 3 years (until the money ran out).  My goal since starting the T/MC in 1993 was that universities in every part of the city would have T/MC strategies, focusing on the area surrounding their university.  See Mike's map & article here.

Furthermore, my vision was that these universities would actually connect and share ideas and what they were learning, so each could have a growing impact on helping end poverty in the region.  

I've posted 78 articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog since 2005, focusing on universities and roles they might take.  On this wiki page I outline my vision for university partnerships.  Since every big city in the world has pockets of concentrated poverty, and universities, my invitation extends to the world. 

It's 2022 and that's still my hope.

Enjoy your reading. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

PS:  I talked with Michael Tam on Facebook in 2020. He's living in Hong Kong and serves as a curriculum development officer in the education bureau of the government. This is an example of the long-term connections I seek to foster.

If we want to help kids through school...

This is a new presentation created by Byeonghui Kim, an intern from IIT who has been working with Tutor/Mentor Connection for the past two weeks. This communicates strategy that was first outlined in this PDF.

See the full presentation here.

By presenting this information in a new format we hope more people will look at it and adopt the strategy in their own efforts to help kids in high poverty neighborhoods have the adult support networks they need to move more successfully to jobs and careers. This type of work can be done by teens and college students, or business volunteers, anywhere in the world. The ideas can be applied to any city. Visit this group to join in this effort.

Expanding Networks Supporting Inner City Youth

This is a presentation done in May-June 2011 by Interns from Illinois Institute of Technology. It is an example of the type of work youth in high schools and colleges throughout the country could be doing to help solve complex social problems. Social Network Analysis - Mapping growth of a Network Visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection Intern group and add yourself to this project.

Interns for Jan-Feb - Assignments

This pdf is the introduction created by Song Mi Lee, our second Jan/Feb 2012 intern. Visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum to see how I coach interns and the projects they develop.

For the past couple of years the first activity I've asked interns to do is to create a visual introduction of themselves and show their range of experiences and their network. Who knows! Maybe one will be related to the CEO of Hyundai or another firm that does business in the US. This is a graphic from another slide Song Mi created. As her friends and family and university network look at what she writes about the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC perhaps one or more will want to become a partner, sponsor, or another volunteer, helping us apply these ideas in Chicago, and helping them apply the ideas in Korea and other countries.

That's the goal of this network building.

Our interns come from a program at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. They spend the first few months of their internship taking classes at IIT, then spend six weeks with a community organization. We've been lucky to have IIT interns for several years. This page shows some of the work that has been done.

As alumni, faculty and other students at IIT see this work we hope one will want to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC as a partner and perhaps even fund a program on campus that continues this work well into the future.

It's all about network-building.

New Interns for Jan-Feb 2012

We have two new interns from IIT and Korea working with the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC this Jan/Feb. They are Song Mi Lee (Stella) and Sung Hee Jung (Jade). This graphic is from an introduction Jade created to show her experiences and her network.

Our goal with these internships is to share the thinking of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC with our interns so that they can then communicate our ideas in their own visual presentations to people in their own networks.

I support this process in this Korea-Chicago group on Ning (most of our interns have been from Korea, but others have come from China and India).

I'm also trying to find interns, researchers, partners and volunteers for this Social Network Analysis group. The graphic that Jade created shows her to be part of a network. The students who have been interns in the past six years are also potentially part of a network as are the students and volunteers who have been part of the tutor/mentor programs I've led since 1975.

If we can harness social network analysis tools we can create a better understanding of the growth of this network over a period of years and we can connect the members of the network to each other in a social problem solving platform where they can each help each other while drawing from all of the information and ideas that we have been aggregating for so many years.

If you'd like to join in or be a sponsor or help in other ways just introduce yourself in the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

Network Building: Role of Interns and Volunteers

This blog shows how interns from many colleges and universities have been helping Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection communicate its message to people who can respond as volunteers, leaders, technology support, donors, etc., helping our organization, but also helping any other tutor/mentor program in Chicago, or in other cities.

This graphic is one that illustrates this concept, and which may be converted into an animation by a future intern.



One of our recent interns was Jordan Merlo, a student at Loyola University. She just completed a 12-week intern, which was part of a class assignment. She had to write a final paper, which is posted here on her blog.

Our goal is that hundreds, or even thousands, of students in high schools, colleges and universities all over the world are writing blog articles like Jordan's, with the same goal, and the same topic. That will draw the daily attention of millions of potential volunteers and every day, and change the flow of philanthropy from one where non profits are all seeking food (funding) like fish in a bowl, to one where people who can help (volunteers/ donors/ etc.) are searching the Internet using systems like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to choose what city, what zip code, then what program, they want to help.

Jordan is just one blogger you'll find on our Ning site. In addition, if you visit the Cabrini Connections blog, you'll find links to blogs written by our own staff and volunteers.

Finally, if you visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection site, you'll find a long list of bloggers that we follow, who write about learning, fund raising, collaboration, and even tutoring and mentoring.