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While most educators are focused on what happens in schools during the traditional school day, I focus on the non school hours, and ways volunteers from the business community can connect with k-12 kids in long-term, volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring.

I do this because it's a way to expand the aspirations of kids who don't have a broad range of people modeling college and careers beyond poverty.  It's also a way to expand the number of people who don't live in poverty, or have kids in schools, who become personally involved.  I see this as a critically important strategy for getting more people involved in this process of innovation.

Since I've led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program since 1975 I have collected a wealth of personal experience. I've also built a network of peers who I learn from.  In 1993 I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to formally share my experiences, and to build a knowledge library showing all of the organizations offering various forms of tutoring and/or mentoring in Chicago. As we adopted the internet in 1998 we expanded our library and network to collect and share ideas from all over the world.

Thus, when I talk of learning, I'm talking of the learning that adults and student outside of poverty can do to understand the different advantages they have, and the disadvantages that poor kids have.  I'm talking of pointing people to this vast store of information on the Internet, so that more people are using the same information to become more informed, and more involved, in long-term strategies that lead more kids through school and into jobs and careers.

I share this information here, here, and here and in many links from these sites. I hope that this expands the information everyone else has who is a user of this site.