A Successful Tutor Training Conference

Hello Everybody! I just wanted to say how happy I was with the Tutor Training Conference that was held this past Saturday, September 27th at Fourth Presbyterian Church in conjunction with Cabrini Green Tutoring and Chicago Lights at Fourth Presbyterian Church. Attendance by our volunteers shot up dramatically with 20 people affiliated with Cabrini Connections coming to the conference for at least part of our day.

Several of our volunteers presented workshops at the conference. Tami Wielgus was a panelist on making the most of the tutoring session. Alexandria Hill spoke about establishing boundaries and expecations with your student. Amy Proger discussed on what matters for college readiness and access for urban youth. Finally, Jen Nolan and Carla Reyes presented a workshop on helping your student get accepted into and pay for college. I was only able to attend one of the sessions since I was helping greet people at the entrance for most of the day, but I was so glad that I was able to Jen and Carla's workshop. Despite only graduating from college a little over a year ago, I found the workshop to be extremely insightful and I feel I am now more confident in answering college-related questions from our students.

Overall, I felt like the conference is a wonderful example of different organizations collaborating with one another on a common goal. As the Tutor/Mentor Research and Networking Coordinator, I use it as a perfect example of the success that an event such as Tutor Training Conference can have when programs such as Cabrini Connections, Cabrini Green Tutoring and Chicago Lights work together to make it happen.

6 Days Until the Volunteer Recruitment Coffeehouse Night!

6 Days and counting as of today! I'm so excited!

Today, I'm going to focus on the importance of our volunteers, here at Cabrini Connections and at other organizations as well. After all, we have a whole campaign devoted to recruiting new volunteers, thus our Volunteer Recruitment Campaign. As any non-profit knows, volunteers are essential to making organizations run, and run well. In tutoring and mentoring programs especially, it's the volunteers who are doing what the organizations have set out to do: tutor and/or mentor a child.

So, of course we need to recruit new volunteers every year to do the job of being tutors and mentors. Different programs have different groups of people that they draw from to get volunteers. Working in the Schools is known for tapping both the corporate and the retiree community to find volunteers. Retirees are a great resource because they have a lot of free time and they also have a wealth of wisdom and experience to impart on young people. Chicago Lights at Fourth Presbyterian Church draws from the population that goes to church at Fourth Presbyterian. Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship are another wonderful place to recruit volunteers because most faiths have some emphasis on giving service to the community. Cabrini Green Tutoring, East Village Youth Program, and Cabrini Connections all tend to draw from the population of young professionals who are great for their energy that they give to the kids and for their willingness to also help out with fundraising and putting on social events like Martini Madness, our next event after the Coffeehouse Night, which will be hosted on Friday October 17th. (Look for more details about that coming soon!)

However, unfortunately, volunteers move on. They may go to grad school, get married, have babies, or have to move for their job. We hope that they will still be able to stay in touch with us as they transition and that possibly that they will be a tutor/mentor elsewhere if they can't be one at Cabrini Connections. This reality of volunteers leaving though is what spurs us to put on the Volunteer Recruitment Campaign every year. There are so many people who have the potential to be fantastic volunteers, they just need to be reminded that there is a need.

Hong Kong Intern's Blog

Oh, and just to let everybody know. I added my colleague, Paul Wei's blog to my favorite links. Paul is an intern from Hong Kong Baptist University who will be with us for two months. He's a great guy and I think his observations about working in an American non-profit are incredibly insightful and interesting. Enjoy!

End of a Busy Week

Greetings! I have just completely an exhausting, yet very fulfilling second week at Cabrini Connections.
The third day of the Edgewood College visit was a short one - all the Edgewood College students and the kids left around noon. During our short morning together we did several activities, but one in particular left a big impression on the kids. We played jeopardy, but our version was all about college and careers. I think the part that made the kids think the most was the category about "Cost of Living." Several questions were "What is the average salary of someone with only an 8th grade education?" (Higher than I expected - although only $14,000/year), "How much do diapers and wipes cost per month?" (a whopping $100) and what does the average two bedroom apartment cost in Chicago ($1500!). These were things that I had no idea about when I went to college, so I thought it was important that the kids realized how much things really do cost and how important it is for them to stay and school. I also thought it was really important that the Edgewood College people kept emphasizing how much money there is out there to help kids go to college. If they have the grades, there really is no excuse for them not to go to college. However, I also thought it was important to emphasize that going to trade school, or getting a job that doesn't require a college education is a very viable option as well. I think my Northwestern friends would be surprised to realize just how much construction workers, or plumbers or electricians really do make and how they have great benefits as well. Since a good number of the kids at Cabrini Connections will not go to college, the emphasis on these type of jobs is so important as well.
All in all, I think the Edgewood College graduate students got just as much out of working with the Cabrini Connections kids as the Cabrini Connections kids got out of working with the graduate students. I know it was great for the kids to meet adults who were going to school and who were becoming teachers, since a lot of kids, especially on the last day, shared their negative experiences with teachers with the graduate students. For the graduate students, however, I thought it was very important to interact with the Cabrini Connections kids so closely because I think they got a lot of insight into these kids' lives that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
In a complete reversal of situations, yesterday Cabrini Connections had its 12th Annual Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament at Highland Park Country Club. Jimmy Biggs was one of the first Cabrini Connections students and worked for Cabrini Connections after high school. Tragically, he died at a very young age from Diabetes, which Dan Bassill emphasized is one of the most common silent killers of young people in the Inner City.
I thought it was a great idea to bring out a couple of the Cabrini Connections kids to the Golf Tournament, both current and graduated, to put a face on the program. All different kinds of businesses, corporate firms, etc. participated in the golf tournament and it was definitely a different crowd than what I had been working with since I started Cabrini Connections. For most of the day, I supervised one of the Par-3 holes where a hole-in-one contest was going on. At all of the Par-3's, if you got a hole-in-0ne you would win a prize such as a 2-year lease on a brand new Lexus, or an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii. Unfortunately nobody won, but I still had a great time. While the tournament was going on, the Cabrini Connections kids were zooming around in golf carts and taking photos of the teams. Hopefully, next week I'll put up some photos of the golf tournament and the Edgewood College visit. Anyway, while I was supervising the hole-in-one contest, I was attempting to tell the players about Cabrini Connections, to little avail since they were pretty focused on our golf game. However, after the tournament, while we had dinner and a silent auction, I found a great opportunity to tell people about Cabrini Connections, and also my fellowship. It was a nice change of pace talking to adults in the business or law world about Cabrini Connections and I was really pleased how interested and responsive the people were.
Next week, look forward to stories of poker night and photos of the past week!

Edgewood College Visit Day 2

It is the end of Day 2 of Edgewood's College visit and I think we are all exhausted (but in a good way) at this point. The first thing we did was listen to a college admissions counselor on what it takes to get into college. What was really great was that the college admissions counselor who came from Edgewood was African-American and grew up on the south side of Chicago. She kept emphasizing that there were lots of scholarships out there for kids in their situation and there is absolutely no excuse when it comes to paying for college. I really hoped the kids were listening (it was early still) because I think she will be a great resource for them.
This morning, we also did several activities at Cabrini Connections, including an activity about obstacles where we blindfolded the kids and they had to guide themselves along a rope and where obstacles were placed in front of them. The point was to show the kids that even though they had obstacles placed in front of them, they could never let go of the rope. The kids understood the activity pretty quickly but did not seem to be as involved as they were in the next activity.
The next activity we did was a combination of charades and pictionary where two students who were on different teams picked a job out of a hat and either had to act out the job or draw it. Once the kids guessed what the job was, the Edgewood people would read a description of what you need in order to qualify for the job. The most interesting part was when the job of police officer came up and the kids listed skills necessary for the job as being: aggression, willingness to kill, etc. The Edgewood College people emphasized that there are good cops and bad cops and that a good cop is not aggressive and does not kill unless he or she absolutely has to. I found this to be especially interesting because I felt it really demonstrated how the police force are viewed in these kids' communities as something negative while they really should be viewed as a positive force there to protect them, rather than hurting them.
After lunch, we boarded a bus to Navy Pier. I think the kids had a good time on the Ferris Wheel, although I wish our visit there could have been longer. After Navy Pier, we walked to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where we got free admission. I was a little disappointed in the Edgewood College people loudly commenting on how "weird" the art was, because I think the kids were finding it interesting and besides, it's good for them to be exposed to new things like modern art. The main exhibit was on contemporary art in Mexico and I think a lot of topics explored in the art were really meaningful to the kids, especially certain works that were influenced by the issue of gang violence. Again, I wished we had stayed longer because I think these kids need, and deserve to have as much exposure to these kinds of things as possible.
Like yesterday, today was very successful and I truly feel that our students at Cabrini Connections are lucky to have people like those from Edgewood College come and open up new worlds to them.

Edgewood College Visit Day 1

Today was by far the most fun day at Cabrini Connections yet. Edgewood College, a small liberal arts college in Madison, WI comes every year and does field trips, team-building and college counseling with our kids. Most of them are grad students who are teachers or are planning on going into the field of education. It's really important for the kids because a lot of them haven't had any exposure to people who work in the college field and might not even be thinking about going in that direction.
The first thing we did was go to the Freedom Museum at the Tribune Center. The entire museum is dedicated to the First Amendment and I was really impressed that one of our kids could name all parts of the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, to assemble peacefully and to petition). I couldn't even name all the different parts of the First Amendment and so I was really impressed. The museum was very cool and I think the kids especially enjoyed the part where you could record a clip of you describing what freedom meant to you. Then you can go to a video screen and watch what you said as well as what other people have said, including former president Jimmy Carter and the newest Bull, Joakim Noah.
We then did a scavenger hunt along the upper part of the Loop. I had a great group of girls who really took the initiative to go above and beyond what they were asked to do. Rather than find just one person who speaks a foreign language, they found two. Rather than find three ethnic restaurants, they found five. After racing back (our team got second, but I would give them first place for the effort they put into it), we had lunch and then did an activity about networking - something that I think everybody should work on. We then filled out a form and attached it to a balloon and let it go outside. While not the most environmentally friendly activity, the goal was that someone would find it and write back to the kids about networking. One of the Edgewood College people shared an anecdote about how one time when they did this activity, one of the balloons went all the way to Idaho because it fell in a truck that was making a cross-country trip. We had to do a bit of troubleshooting because the envelopes that we were using to transport the letters were too heavy for just one helium balloon so the coordinators of the activity had to tie several balloons to the letters so they would actually fly. It was a little frustrating for the kids but I think they were amazed when they saw their letters being carried off by the balloons. The final activity of the day was to create posters where the kids chose from different cut-out words to describe themselves. All in all, I think the kids surprised themselves by how much fun they had . I know I'm looking forward to tomorrow when we visit the Museum of Contemporary Art and then Navy Pier!