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



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