During the coming month there will be many ways to celebrate mentoring. Find resources here, here and here.
Most will focus on the act of mentoring, the connection of a mentor and a youth, or of an older worker with a younger one.
However, I focus on intentional actions that make well-organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs available to K-12 youth in every high poverty area of a big city like Chicago. I express my thinking in this visual essay that I created in the early 2000s when the No Child Left Behind Law was introduced.
Below I’m showing a few slides. There are more. I urge you to review the whole thing. click here
This slide includes a birth-to-work arrow that I began using in the 1990s to show the range of activities that should be available to youth as they move through school.
This graphic visually shows that all youth might benefit from some form of mentoring and/or tutoring as some point as they grow up. However, youth living in areas of concentrated poverty have fewer resources in their family or communities to help them through school and into adult lives. The Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) focus on this group.
Youth living in areas with chronic poverty need support from a full range of tutors and mentors, as well as good teachers and well-funded schools.
Policy makers, and voters, need to use maps to focus attention and resources to underserved areas.
There has been a wide range of mis-understanding of what types of tutor, mentor programs exist, as well as who they serve.
If every child lived in a middle income neighborhood (or above) he/she would probably have greater success in school and in jobs and careers.
In an early 2000s article about social capital Bob Pearlman wrote, “But the most significant finding in the study was that a student’s social network can have a significant impact on his/her career choice. Students whose parents are both in high-tech careers are more likely to be interested in technology careers themselves. In addition, 83 percent of students rely on personal connections for career-related information and guidance.“
I’ve been influenced over the past 30 years by the work of Dr. Robert D. Putnam. I point to his “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” book in this article.
If the teacher is the best tutor, the professional tutor, is next best. However, due to the high costs of professional tutoring it’s seldom available for more than a short period of time, and not in all schools.
Volunteer-based tutoring was proposed as a solution in the No Child Left Behind Law and continues to be widely supported. But without proper training and support, the impact of volunteers can be limited. Much of the volunteer-based tutoring taking place in the USA happens at schools, during the school day. However, there are also many models of non-school tutoring, along with a growing number of on-line tutoring models.
I’ve focused on the non-school hours, which I divide into two time frames. The first is the traditional 3-6pm after school time frame where kids have safe places to go between when the formal school day ends and when parents come home from work.
The second time frame is the after-5pm time when workplace volunteers are more readily available and more likely to make long-term (multi-year) commitments. This may be more needed in big cities like Chicago where distance and the size of high poverty areas make it more difficult for volunteers to leave work and go to a school or afterschool program. The Internet offers a new way to connect youth with professional and volunteer tutors, mentors and learning resources, but access to computer hardware and Internet services still limit availability for kids in high poverty areas.
When I first joined the volunteer based program at Montgomery Ward in 1973 it was called a “Tutoring Program”. However, I soon learned that we needed to mentor and inspire learning before we can be effective tutors. That’s why I started using the term “tutor/mentor” in the late 1970s.
Furthermore, as kids grow up, events in their life can derail a focus on learning. That’s when mentoring needs to be available.
During National Mentoring Month all forms of mentoring, including peer-to-per and workplace mentoring, will be celebrated. However, this often overlooks the special, more comprehensive needs of youth in high poverty areas.
In many of my graphics I show a ‘birth-to-work’ timeline to emphasize the 12 to 20 consecutive years of support needed to help kids born in areas of concentrated, persistent poverty.
During National Mentoring Month think of ways to make volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs available to kids in more places. Enlist CEOs in the business and professional community as champions of this effort, so they encourage the involvement of employee time, talent and company dollars.
While I focus on Chicago and its suburbs this map shows many cities with areas of concentrated poverty. Each of theses should have someone writing articles exactly like mine, and for the same purpose. We should be connecting with each other in on-line communities and working to overcome policy and funding challenges that limit the availability and quality of organized tutor/mentor programs.
View this PDF at this link. View more like it on this page. Find a Chicago tutor/mentor program to receive your support by looking at the lists on this page.
Thank you for reading. I hope you’ll share this so others read and use the ideas.
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A year from now let’s connect and you can tell me what you’ve done with these ideas!