Shooting at Crane, 20th CPS student killed

On March 7th, a fight at Crane High School, on the West Side, resulted in the shooting and killing of one student and another student being in a coma after a savage beating with a golf club. Police are saying the fight was due to gang rivalries and as of today, more than 200 students who live in the ABLA housing projects where the shooter was from have to be given a police escort to school when it resumes next Monday due to fear of retaliation. There are many fingers being pointed at different directions, but just for curiosity's sake I looked up in our Tutor/Mentor Connection Program Locator, where Crane High School and the ABLA homes are located, and how many tutoring and mentoring programs for high school students are in that zip code. Not surprisingly, there are only 4 programs in the 60612 zip code that offer tutoring and mentoring programs.

Starting in May, I will be transitioning to my role for the next year as the Tutor/Mentor Connection Coordinator. One of my roles will be doing outreach to programs in areas such as that around Crane High School and helping to possibly new programs out there. Another one of my roles will be coordinating the Tutoring and Mentoring Networking and Leadership Conference, which will be held Thursday May 29th and Friday May 30th at Northwestern Law School in downtown Chicago. We are still looking for people who are wanting to hold workshops or be a part of panels. I will be mediating two panels myself, one on Thursday morning on strategies for running successful tutoring and mentoring programs and the other one on Friday morning, on volunteer recruitment and retention.

Finally, on another sad note, 20 CPS students so far this year have been killed by some act of violence. It's only March 18th and that is way too many young lives lost too soon. Almost all of them are from neighborhoods where tutoring and mentoring programs are few and far between. While many of these students who were killed were good students and citizens, they would have certainly benefitted from tutoring and mentoring programs in their areas as safe havens from the violence of their neighborhoods. Even more so, their killers would've also benefitted from tutoring and mentoring programs as an alternative activity to the violence they chose to inflict on another human being.