For those who believe that "groups of 4 or 5" sharing and learning together can make a difference in the lives of kids, I encourage you to become volunteers in non-school tutor/mentor programs where you can take the role of teacher/coach and work with 4-5 youth to create this learning opportunity.
If enough volunteers do this in enough locations, it would seem that youth from non-school programs would be going to school better prepared to succeed, and able to mentor teachers and educators to the benefits of this type of learning. It could be that if youth/volunteer pods become successful enough that youth will become self-empowered learners, and all of the adults in their community (land based and virtual) will become their mentors as they seek the knowledge they need to reach their full potential in life. This is an opportunity for you to prove that this works. During August almost every volunteer-based organization in the country will be looking for volunteers. While many may see this as just spending time with a kid as a tutor/mentor, my hope is that you'll look a this as an invitation for you to offer your talent in a program where you can help create an internet-learning and collaboration environment. In Chicago the Tutor/Mentor Connection hosts an annual recruitment campaign and maintains a database of volunteer-based organizations. You can search this program locator in the www.tutormentorconnection.org web site. In other cities, you may need to search national volunteer search engines, like www.volunteermatch.org to locate the tutor/mentor programs in your zip code. Don't way for a volunteer organization to find you. If you're passionate about creating learning pods, then reach out and offer yourself as an organizer of this type of activity in an existing non-school organization. You'll find less bureacracy and less resistence to innovation in many of these groups. And you may find that they meet in a time frame when it's more possible for workplace volunteers to participate. For those who get involved in August and work all year in a tutor/mentor program, I encourage you to share your experiences with others so that by the end of the year there is a body of experience that shows what works and why this is important for schools to adopt. If we wait for the schools or the public funding institutions to respond to the needs it will be many years from now before most kids who live in high poverty neighborhoods are in these type of learning settings. You don't need to wait. You can act now. Dan Bassill Tutor/Mentor Connection 800 W. Huron Chicago, Il. 60622 http://tutormentor.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
