"Why Not Me?" Geisha Williams at IWU Commencement

In my May 6th article I shared some Tweets from the previous week.  One was of the Sunday, May 2, Commencement ceremonies of Illinois Wesleyan University, where I earned a BA in History in 1968 and was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 2001. 

The keynote speaker was Geisha Williams, the only Latina CEO of a Fortune 200 company.  She's also the wife of one of my Acacia fraternity brothers!  View the video to see here speech, then ask yourself, "Why not me?"

To all graduates. "Why not you?" https://t.co/j46BO2JF4t

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) May 3, 2021

When I posted this I did not have a link to her IWU address, so pointed to this blog article featuring Geisha Williams and the "Why not me" video message.  

Today this article and a photo of Geisha and her husband Jay Williams was posted.  It included a link to her address at the IWU commencement. 

This is a message that volunteer tutors and mentors, parents, coaches and educators need to be sharing with youth throughout the world.

"Why not me?"

"Yes, I can."

New Chicago Resource to aid youth, teachers, parents

Yesterday I and about 150 others attended a To&Through Project launch event at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. This is a powerful data-driven portal intended to increase the number of Chicago Public School 9th graders who aspire to go to a 4-year college (76%) to more than the 18%  who actually do go on to earn a 4-year college degree within 10 years of starting high school.

A range of handouts were provided, including one showing key milestones included in the To&Through strategy.  As I looked at them, I felt there needed to be something added, so I did.

Scroll down on the To&Through home page and you'll see a section under the heading of "Milestones that Matter", which I fully support.

However,  I feel that without emphasizing the support needed, at the school, and during the non-school hours, that helps kids get to 9th grade with momentum to succeed, too few will invest in the programs and talent needed in every school neighborhood where too few kids are not going to college and finishing.

I wrote this article in 2007 to illustrate how the huge emphasis on what happens in the school often reduces resources available for what needs to also be happening in non-school hours.

In the same 2007 article I included this concept map to illustrate how our combined support helps kids move through school and into careers, with, or without, a traditional 4-year college degree.

In a 2014 article titled "Developing Talent: Unlocking the Passion in Employees" I referred to a white paper published by the Deloitte University Press, which describes the concept of 'worker passion'. I hope you'll read it and understand the value of this trait as well as I do.

To me the development of these habits needs to start in elementary school and be reinforced all the way through high school, and then in vocational school and/or college.

Without educators and education funders focusing on pre 9th grade and post high school, and the non-school hours, it's likely that too few resources will support these other important milestones.

My only other wish from what I saw was that there would be an abundant use of maps.  

This map is from a presentation created in the 1990s to show a school-centered strategy that I was recommending then, and still advocate for now. This PDF is out of date, but the ideas are usable.

With a map you can show high schools and feeder schools within a defined area. In this case I'm showing Doolittle Elementary school and Phillips High School, on Chicago's South Side. On the map, and in the PDF, I show non-school programs in the area. On the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator's Interactive map, you can double click on a green star, and go to the web site of the organization.

On this graphic, I'm also listing businesses in the area. In other maps I show hospitals and colleges. In the asset section of the Program Locator you can build maps showing these assets.  All of these groups could be meeting regularly to help students move through school and into jobs and careers,  using data provided by To&Through and ideas provided by many others, to constantly increase the success of young people in this map-area.

In an article posted on the MappingforJustice blog I illustrate how libraries and hospitals in areas with highly segregated public schools could take on the intermediary role of drawing stakeholders in a map-area together. 

Similar map stories could be created for every high school in the city, or in other cities. Students, working with teachers and business volunteers could be creating the maps, creating the map stories, sharing them on blogs, YouTube and Instagram, and hosting meetings where adults discuss this information and become motivated to provide the talent and dollars needed in each school neighborhood.

Much of what I've written here was not discussed yesterday, or is on the To&Through web site.  Furthermore, the Interactive Program Locator is out of date, needs updating, and I've no money or talent to do this. Thus, it's not as useful for students and community organizers as it could be.

I'm hoping that many who attended will take a look and want to talk more about these ideas.

We Want Same Outcomes for Youth. Collective Effort Needed.

We all want same outcomes. We want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate, and move on to 21st century jobs and careers.

This graphic is one of many that I’ve created to help communicate ideas and strategies. You can find more here and in each blog article I’ve written since 2005.





If we do our work well, and for many years, we will have alumni providing their own testimonial to how a tutor/mentor program has helped them. This video is from a 2010 year-end celebration. The speaker first became involved with this organization in the early 1990s.


Year-End Dinner 2010: Tangela Marlowe from Cabrini Connections on Vimeo.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in all high poverty areas of the Chicago region. I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in July 2011 to keep doing this work in Chicago and to help other cities apply these ideas.

I hope you’ll read the rest of this article and share my thinking with others.

If you’re a volunteer, investor, parent or donor, what indicators should we look for when we try to evaluate weather or not to become involved with a program? If you’re a community leader, how do we make sure enough programs are available in all of the places where they are needed?

To support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in many places I’ve created a library of links to articles showing the challenges non profits face in offering long-term programs that reach youth early and stay with them through high school and even into college and adult lives.

One of the primary challenges volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs face is that most research and resources devoted to education is focused on what happens at schools during the 6-7 hours they are open every day for 9 months a year. This graphic illustrates a need to focus on building more mentor-rich youth supports in the non school hours, especially in neighborhoods of high poverty where too few of these resources exist.

I think we need to expand the number of people who are taking responsibility for youth growing up. This graphic illustrates the responsibility of the “village” for helping kids through school and into jobs. Mobilizing the resources of the village and pointing them to schools AND non-school organizations in all high poverty neighborhoods represents a huge challenge.

I’ve spent the last 20 years looking for ways to overcome these challenges so that constantly improving tutoring/mentoring programs could reach youth in more places.

Part of my vision is to create an adult education strategy that would reach people who don’t live in poverty, but who benefit, along with kids and families, from the work done by tutor/mentor programs. I’ve seen how effective marketing and advertising has created demand for fast food, internet services, PCs, ePhones and all sorts of consumer products.

How can we create the same customer support for non profits and social benefit organizations working with youth in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities?

Can we educate donors, volunteers and parents to look at a map of a city that shows where tutor/mentor programs are most needed as the first step in deciding what programs they want to help?

Once you pick a zip code and determine what programs are in that area, what do you need to see on the youth organization’s web site that indicates it has a vision and strategy that over time, and with consistent support from volunteers and donors, shows it can reach the result we all want?

I created this list several years ago. Do you agree with it? What would you add?

* Home page features "mentoring or tutoring" with headline words and/or pictures

* Home page has easy-to-find sub-feature of "mentoring or tutoring" with words and/or pictures

* Volunteer involvement opportunity is clear

* Contact information is clear so volunteer or donor can contact program

* Case made for why tutoring/mentoring is important

* Site shows role of tutoring/mentoring in workforce development

* Site shows benefit of volunteer involvement in tutoring/mentoring on the volunteer

* Site provides links to research related to tutoring, mentoring, poverty, education, etc.

* Site links to other tutor/mentor programs in the same city

* Site links to one or more Tutor/Mentor Connection web sites and/or Program Locator

We need many more people looking at this information and discussing these ideas. Where can we gather people who can help (resource providers, talent, media, political leaders, information organizers, facilitators, etc.) with people who need help (programs, clients) and with ideas (research, best practices, benchmarking) so we’re all connected to each other in ways that help youth organizations build and sustain the organizational strength needed to grow to be “great” organizations who can sustain youth/volunteer participation for as long as it takes to help the young person be out of school and in a job beyond poverty?

Furthermore, how can we expand this conversation to one where we’re trying to help all high poverty neighborhoods of a metropolitan region have “great” programs helping youth in each neighborhood work from birth to work?

And how do we sustain the flow of resources and talent to these programs in times when public attention is drawn to more high profile issues, such as elections, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes and war?

Each of the essays posted in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library, the links in the Tutor/Mentor Library, and the articles in this blog are intended to be starting points and stimulants for discussions taking place in thousands of other places.

You can use these ideas where you are and I might never hear anything telling me that you have found this information useful.

But I hope some of my readers will join me in the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum, on Facebook, on Linkedin, and on Twitter to add your own ideas and vision or to help me develop and share these ideas with more people.

If you're in Chicago come to the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference on November 19 at the Metcalfe Federal Building and introduce yourself to me and others who will be attending the event. See http://www.tutormentorconference.org.

Role of Leaders - Making Connections

This image shows teens an volunteers at a typical Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor. Throughout each school year this program serves as a safe place in non-school hours where volunteers who don't live in poverty, but do have jobs and college degrees, can meet with 7th to 12th grade teens who do live in high poverty neighborhoods. These teens are not surrounded by family and community residents with college educations or who work in business and professional careers. That's what poverty is all about.

These kids also don't have many places in non-school hours where they can use computers and participate in college and career readiness activities, or get extra help with homework. That happens at Cabrini Connections every week.

As Mayor Emanuel's strategic planning teams begin to look at violence, education, safety, workforce development and other issues, we hope they use the maps and other ideas we share to build an understanding of what places in the non-school hours are connecting youth and volunteers with learning and technology the way we try to at Cabrini Connections. The map below is from the Program Locator that the Tutor/Mentor Connection has created. You can zoom into neighborhoods and click on the green stars to get contact information, or even web site links.



While much emphasis is on making schools better by improving teacher and principal quality, I feel a parallel effort must be make to make more and better mentor-rich non-school programs available for k-12 kids in high poverty neighborhoods. Such programs need to be on-going, not project based. Mayor Daley helped set up the AfterSchool Matters program a few years ago and it does a great job of helping existing programs have short term learning programs. However, this does not address the infrastructure needed to make a program a great program, and that would make great non school programs available in every part of the city and suburbs.

This graphic illustrates our challenge. What most people see when they look at a non-school tutor/mentor program is the youth and volunteer connecting with each other. They don't look at what goes on at the agency to ensure that this is happening and that it is well supported on an on-going basis. We have over 200 programs in our database and each one needs a strong infrastructure which is only possible if there is consistent donor support.

This is the role the Mayor and other highly visible leaders should be taking. Connect the people you know with the programs in the city that are already working with kids. Help each program build the operating infrastructure needed tohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif sustain long-term involvement of youth and volunteers. If this is happening on a parallel pace to efforts to improve schools we may send more kids to school more motivated to learn and that can have a greater impact on education than all the billions spent on teachers.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection has been aggregating this information for 18 years with an inconsistent base of philanthropic support. We're hosting our 35th Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference on May 19 and 20 in Matteson, Il because we could not find a donor/sponsor to help us rent space in the city.

If the new Mayor and those who support him will provide financial support to the Tutor/Mentor we can help build this parallel support system. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You need to grease the one you already have.

Reframing School Dropout as a Public Health Issue

"Good education predicts good health, and disparities in health and in educational achievement are closely linked," writes Nicholas Freudenberg and Jessica Ruglis, in an article posted at http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2007/oct/07_0063.htm

The authors write "If medical researchers were to discover an elixir that could increase life expectancy, reduce the burden of illness, delay the consequences of aging, decrease risky health behavior, and shrink disparities in health, we would celebrate such a remarkable discovery. Robust epidemiological evidence suggests that education is such an elixir. Yet, health professionals rarely identified improving school graduation rates as a major public health objective, nor have they systematically examined their role in achieving this objective."

Last week I wrote about my participation in the Pathways into Health conference. I encouraged participants to continue to network via on-line forums.

In the Freudenberg/Ruglis article one recommendation was to target schools and cities with the most serious dropout problems for intensive intervention, saying "in more than 20 cities at least three-quarters of high school students attend schools where fewer than 60% of students graduate". Graduation rates for 10 largest public school districts are included in the report. In Chicago the 2001 graduation rate for African Americans was 42.1% and for Hispanic youth was 50.8%.

I'd go further and encourage them to use maps to show where poverty and poorly performing schools are concentrated in these cities, to create marketing plans that distribute solutions into each of these neighborhoods.

In their conclusion, Freudenberg/Ruglis wrote, "seldom have health and education professionals been in a better position to work together to achieve common goals. Rarely has a single problem -- high drop out rates -- contributed to so many adverse social, economic, and health conditions."

I read this article with enthusiasm and I hope it stimulates other health care professionals to look outside the box for partners and solutions to the drop out problem.

However, outside of the box means outside of the school building, and the non school hours, not just non-traditional thinking.

In previous blogs I've pointed to the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools as a leader in a movement to make learning supports a part of public education policy.

In my writing, my only criticism with these articles has been that solutions have tended to be primarily school-based. Even when the Freudenberg/Ruglis article talks about connecting young people to caring adults, they tend to emphasize building connections with adults at the school, and not in the non-school hours when kids can connect with adults who hold jobs and work in other careers beyond education and social services. Cabrini Connections is an example of such a program.

In the 10 biggest cities poverty is a root cause of poorly performing schools and the number of kids living in poverty neighborhoods is well over 100,000. I enthustically encourage education and health leaders to connect their strategies.

However, I also feel they need to connect with business and workforce development leaders and look at the non-school hours and non-school locations as times and places when adults can connect with kids in long-term mentoring and tutoring programs.

Such connections can expand the network and skills of adults involved who model a diversity of different aspirations and career opportunities, and can expand the number of people who are personally connected to these kids, and care enough to give time, talent and dollars to build and sustain comprehensive systems of support.

We can, and should, make these connections in Internet forums. However, we can also connect in face to face events. We're hosting a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in the South Suburbs on Nov. 15 and 16.

If you have read this far, you're interested. I hope you'll bring your network to the conference.