Concept Mapping my blog

Today marks my blog's 145th post! Who'd have thought that I'd have stuck with it, especially considering my only previous foray into the blogging ended after a mere 11 grueling posts. However, the blog continues to go strong. If you're interested, my most popular article has been the one I wrote summarizing some research about Racism in the Job Market. Anyway, since my year is up and I'm going to be leaving my full-time position at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection, I thought it would be prudent to offer a new and exciting way to relive the magic...A CONCEPT MAP!

Anyway, you may have seen my map of Northwestern University's assets a couple days ago, well in a similar vein, I've mapped the various articles in my blog according to some general themes. Interestingly, since I've blogged about much of the work I've done here, the concept map can also read as a job description or summary of some of the projects I've embroiled myself in during my time here. Hopefully Bradley Troast, my NUPIP successor and others will not start from scratch, but rather build from some of the knowledge and expertise I've accumulated and shared in these articles and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the work we're doing and how to constantly expand and improve our social impact! So, without further ado, here's the official Chrispip concept map (be sure to click each node to find the relevant articles).

A few of the many uses of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator

If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to visit our interactive tutor/mentor program locator and take a look around. Whatever your aims, it's a powerful tool that allows you to visualize complex sets of information and draw new and exciting inferences about. Though we created it as a tool to help potential leaders in youth tutoring/mentoring build capacity and relationships with other non-profits and community assets, you can just as easily use it to look at your neighborhood and see who your neighbors are, or learn about neighborhoods that you've heard mentioned in the news but never actually bothered to look up. There are as many potential uses for the interactive maps as there are potential users, the key is taking the plunge and visiting www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and taking a look around. For inspiration, check out the following case studies, which provide some examples of potential uses of the interactive maps.

Telling the Tutor/Mentor Connection Story

As I've mentioned in the past, one of the most difficult parts of my job is to explain the Tutor/Mentor Connection quickly and effectively, while not misleading people into thinking of it as something it's not, such as a simple membership organization. For this reason, we have been working with a number of interns from IIT who are helping us to animate some of our concept maps and links libraries in order to make the information more engaging and straightforward. Check out this animated resource map that our interns Sungjoong and Gunwoong have been working on! I'm currently recording some audio voiceovers that will come up when you first load the page as well as when you scroll over the various page elements.

They're also doing this for our homework help links and Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy map. So check out their progress and be sure to stay tuned for the finished product in a week or so!

This type of project is an example of something that tech savvy volunteers like Sungjoong and Gunwoong can do from a distance. Since we are sharing strategic planning information via our wiki's, anyone, from Seoul to San Fransisco to the South Side can be helping us to build and share knowledge about what we and others are doing to help at-risk kids. What role can you play?

Tutor/Mentor Exchange

As someone who spends more than half of his waking hours working in some capacity to connect at-risk youth with the resources they need to graduate high school, enter college and embark upon meaningful postgraduate careers, I've spent a lot of time researching successful strategies. In all my time here, I'm yet to find a more comprehensive source for information about these topics than www.tutormentorexchange.net With our abundance of websites and other online content such as our blogs, twitter and tutor/mentor program locator, it's easy to overlook www.tutormentorexchange.net. However, to miss out on the valuable tips and strategies here would be to do yourself a disservice, particularly if you're already involved with a youth tutor/mentor program or have been thinking about constructive ways to engage with programs near you.

On this site you can find everything from an extensive How to start a tutor/mentor program tutorial, to strategies for engaging faith communities, hospitals, students, lawyers and business to build resources for your program. Much of the content is informed by our own personal experiences and history running Cabrini Connections as well as our constant networking and information sharing with other programs around the city. There are links to our GIS maps and essays about the many ways that the Tutor/Mentor Connection is trying to build a network of effective, well-distributed and resourced programs in every high-poverty area of the city. Just when you think you've reached a dead end, you realize that an entirely new level of information is just a mouseclick or scroll away.

Therefore, for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge about tangible ways to help kids who could use a hand, please check out http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/ I guarantee you'll stumble upon an idea you've never considered before.

Anyone can make maps! (That means you!)

For those interested in learning more about the many applications of our free online, tutor/mentor program locator, check out Tutor/Mentor Connection's President/CEO Dan Bassill's blog, where he demonstrates how you can use it to create your own maps that help you better understand the news, the geography of Chicago's many unique neighborhoods and ways to get involved in improving opportunities for the youth of these neighborhoods. In his post, Dan explains how he used the interactive maps to create a map showing the location of failing schools and tutoring/mentoring programs in relation to census data about the amount of poverty in these neighborhoods. This helps him and others make sense of the recent ranking of Washington Park's intersection of State St and 55th as the 2nd most dangerous neighborhood in America. His map shows a clear relationship between increasing amounts of poverty and increasing numbers of underperforming and underresourced schools, while highlighting the few programs that are present in these areas where people like you and I can get involved.

Instead of encouraging people to avoid the neighborhood for fear of being victims of crime, an act that only serves to further isolate and deprive its residents of vital commercial activity and positive media attention, mapping the news in this way helps us to understand what positive steps we can take to help the neighborhood's residents change the violent face of their neighborhood through engaging its youth in constructive tutoring/mentoring activities. Though we may not live in these neighborhoods, we can play a role in helping foster their future success by informing our US and IL state representatives as well as aldermen of the positive benefit of tutor/mentor programs that youth tutoring/mentoring programs are already having in these communities. For example, using the interactive tutor/mentor program locator, you can easily look up your congressional district, see what high poverty neighborhoods fall within its borders and identify programs that are already making a difference there. As a constituent, you can contact your rep and encourage them to support these programs.

For example, residents of some of Chicago's most affluent communities, including: Lincoln Park, The Loop and Oak Park share the same 7th district representative, Danny Davis, as residents of some of Chicago's poorest communities: Austin, Washington Park, Garfield Park and North Lawndale (see map above). As Rep Davis' constituents, residents of these affluent neighborhoods have a uniquely powerful voice that can be used to encourage Rep Davis to support programs like ours. I encourage you to go to www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and map your congressional district to see who your political neighbors are. You might be surprised!

PIP and P55 Seminar at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection

This Wednesday, PIP and P55 fellows from Princeton, Northwestern, University of Chicago and Colorado College will be taking a break from the daily grind at their respective non-profits/community organizations to find out a bit about what we do here at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection. So, I thought that I would provide a road map to our discussion here on my blog with the links that we plan on referring to during our presentation, so that interested fellows can easily find and share the information we present with others or return to articles/web sites that they find particularly interesting.

I kick things off by talking about a bit of our history which can be found on the www.cabriniconnections.net website if you click on the "about us" tab on the left side of the page.

A detailed organizational history can be found here.

I continue on to discuss our strategy for making a life-changing difference in the lives of youth living all across the city and how that manifests itself at both a local and a global level, making use of some graphics found on our www.tutormentorexchange.net site, which is an information hub that helps build a convergence of ideas and strategies, resulting in constantly improving tutor/mentor programs being available to more youth in high-poverty neighborhoods.

This pdf essay explains the logic of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Next, former PIP fellow and Tutor/Mentor Connection Coordinator, Nicole White discusses our four-part strategy for accomplishing this mission.

1) Collect knowledge from key stakeholders about volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs: how programs succeed, where programs are located, and where more programs and resources are needed.

2) Aggressively share this knowledge through marketing and public awareness campaigns, capitalizing on the Internet as a chief vehicle of communication.

3) Strengthen involvement of community and industry leaders to increase essential resources to tutor/mentor programs.

4) Facilitate understanding and collaboration among stakeholders to develop the long-term, integrated actions needed to help youths move from birth in poverty to a job or career by age 25.

Mike Trakan explains our innovative use of GIS mapping: http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/

Mike's Mapping for Justice Blog: http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/

I discuss our utilization of "social media" and how we create evangelists for our cause:

Chris’ PIP blog

Nicole’s Tutor/Mentor Connection blog

Dan Bassill’s Tutor/Mentor Leadership blog

EL Da’Sheon’s Cabrini Connections blog

Vjeko's eLearning and Technology blog

Engaging Northwestern Students via: http://nututormentor.ning.com/

Sharing tutoring/mentoring leadership strategies via: http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com/

http://www.classroom20.com/profile/tutormentor/

http://www.socialedge.org/ (just search “tutor mentor”)