Last week, I was firmly in my data-loving mode. Our volunteers are staying with the program longer. This is great. (and I got to make graphs) But this week, the story side. I asked our volunteers why they keep coming back every week. The consensus was clear: "The students!"  (wrote two volunteers from completely different corner...

3 weeks into the new fiscal year, more than a month since most classes ended, firmly settled into 'summer', I think I have all of the data I am going to get for the last year. So I tallied it up, ran it through my spreadsheet, did some math. HTM volunteers gave 1771.25 hours of their time this year.and smiled.  That's an 11% inc...

Last week I shared an infographic about the application process for our volunteers. The requirements really are requirements. And those steps really are the steps in the process.But, that's not really what it takes. When I'm doing that interview, those references for, I'm really looking (well, listening) for…. Someone who works and communicates we...

I stood in the dark at the end of a work event, a colleague and I up to our ankles in snow,  talking about transformation and hope and realism (when we really should have been getting into our cars and driving home before it got any later than it already was)  Adult ed does that to you sometimes. (Or maybe any field that you car...

Each year, we are fortunate to welcome back some volunteers from the previous year, and to welcome some who are new. This school year, we started with a particularly large and strong cohort of new tutors  (Almost half of our current tutors, as it turns out)ProcessFor each new tutor there's an initial flurry of inquiries, emails, questions, the...