President's Message.  

Too Much Information and Too Few Looking At It.   

I've been creating #mapstories since 1993 in an effort to draw more consistent attention to non-school tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. Recently I created an album with some of the stories from the 1990s to illustrate work I think could be done by youth and volunteers in their own efforts to bring more adults into discussions and actions that lead to more and better youth supports, learning, jobs and college opportunities for urban youth.  View the album.     

These map-stories show that the problems of poverty are deep rooted and have been with us for decades. Why have we not been able to do more than we have? 

I think one reason is that these problems are complex, with too many competing interests. Visit the Boston Indicators web site and see ten issue areas important to Boston. Or visit the Working Families Party web site and see the issues they focus on.  Each issue area has many sub-issues.

There are too few leaders calling daily attention to each part of the problem, and to places where people can get information and/or connect with others, to innovate concurrent solutions to each part of the problem. Too few adults can find time to meet with others in traditional place based meetings and too few decision makers are yet connected to each other in on-line learning forums where we have the potential to connect more frequently and engage in "deeper learning".  

It will take many years to get enough people involved to reduce the root causes of many social problems in big cities.  It will take many more years to innovate ways to bring more hope and opportunity to neighborhoods with high rates of poverty, poorly performing schools and street violence. 

Because non profits don't have advertising dollars to draw attention to their ideas the way retail stores draw customers, or political ads try to draw voters, we need to innovate new strategies.

This video was created by an intern working with me in Chicago. It borrows from a blog article I had written, then communicates it using the talent of the student intern. See this and more work done by interns here, and here.  

I've been participating in MOOCs, such as the Deeper Learning MOOC and the Education Technology and Media MOOC because they show ways youth can be involved in project based learning where they show their projects to adults and peers. 

 
Here's a blog article written following a February 2014 shooting in Chicago. Here's another. I think young people could be creating map stories and sharing these stories on the Internet and in meetings with local leaders in their communities.  They would be building skills, learning leadership, connecting with mentors, and drawing adults from their own community into 'deeper learning" that results in growing learning opportunities for the young people themselves.

While we can meet on-line at any time to talk about these ideas, the Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago May and November is a chance to meet with me and others who are involved in this work, and to share your own ideas. 

Sincerely,

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