TED Prize wish on mentoring

[Penelope Millar]

In light of the conversation about personalized learning and the ideas about mentoring/tutoring that were being developed there, I thought that this particular TED talk would be relevant. It's Dave Eggers' TED Prize wish, in which he describes his tutoring center and a desire to spread its success. They also have a website set up for it, Once Upon A School.

[Skip Zilla]

Thank you so very much for posting this TED talk, Penelope. It caused me to openly weep for joy! Dave Eggers is definitely on my contact list; his creative genius and compassion are overwhelmingly compelling. I hope to not only find a way personally to engage myself in helping to meet the challenge of his wish for more participation in his dream, but to ask him humbly for his response to some of the ideas for an initiative I've briefly projected in the "personalized learning" discussion and one I have yet to project at Fireside Learning about pairing schools in relatively close proximity to one another only geographically, not socio-economically or culturally. I am very thankful to know a number of folks like Dave Eggers who are givers of light and hope (and laughter) in this world dulled and darkened by a lack of imagination and lovingkindness.

[Penelope Millar]

I'm glad you found it inspiring and helpful. I loved to see the story of how it built from "hey guys let's have a tutoring center" to something spreading and huge.

[Daniel Bassill]

I was encouraged to visit the TED site last week by another youth program leader in Chicago. I viewed Bono's presentation and his goal of recruiting 1 million activist to lobby the government for more support for Africa. He also had a dream of 1 billion page views or media impressions.

These happen to be my own goals as well, except I want to point these activists to web sites like Fireside Learning and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, where they can learn to become directly, or indirectly involved, in supporting the growth of comprehensive, mentor-rich, non-school tutoring/mentoring programs in inner city neighborhoods of big cities like Chicago.

I find TED to be a rich resource for finding potential collaborators. Thanks for posting it.

[Daniel Bassill]

We held the Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago this past weekend, and Patrick Schafer, Community Outreach Coordinator, 826CHI, http://826chi.org , was one of the speakers. I was prompted to contact him after reading about this program here. That's the power of this type of networking.

[cindy fadel]

I am excited to see that there are others that are inspired by Dave Eggers. You will see my project in the very beginning stages as #39& 39. I am really using his mentoring program as an inspiration. I hope I can make it work as well as he has. It is really one of the secrets to this type of education.