April 2015

30 Days of Teen Programming: Empowering Teens Through Theater

I can take no credit in the creation of my library’s longest-running teen-led program (teen programming guideline 3), and only a little for it’s continued existence since I took it over in 2007. Project Playbill is an intense, 5-week summer theater program. Teens meet together at the library three days a week to write, produce and perform an original short play. Besides the inherent value in their participation, we also entice them with volunteer service credit.

In 2008, My then-supervisor told me that I could cancel Playbill if more teens didn’t participate, because it sucks up a tremendous amount of time. In fact, because Playbill depends on teen leadership and labor to run, the fewer teens who show up, the more work I end up doing. That’s one of the reasons why no teen is ever turned away: you can’t host a teen-led program without teen participation. For the first couple of years I ran it, attendance hovered around five teens. I seriously considered putting Playbill out of its misery.

Continue reading 30 Days of Teen Programming: Empowering Teens Through Theater

30 Days of Teen Programming: Project Outcome & Field-Based Examples of Measuring Outcomes of Young Adult Services

YALSA’s recently updated Teen Programming Guidelines encourage the use of evidence-based outcome measurement as a means of developing meaningful programs for young people. The Public Library Association – through its latest field-driven initiative, Project Outcome – is also working to assist with librarians’ efforts to capture the true value and impact of programs and services. At ALA Annual 2016, PLA will launch Project Outcome, designed to help any programmer measure outcomes beyond traditional markers such as circulation and program attendance. Instead, Project Outcome focuses on documenting how library services and programs affect our patrons’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. It will help librarians use concrete data to prove what they intuitively know to be true: Communities are strengthened by public libraries and patrons find significant value in library services.

Lessons from the Field: Skokie (IL) Public Library

At Skokie Public Library, we participated in the pilot testing of Project Outcome in the fall of 2014 by administering surveys for 10 different programs. The surveys were conducted online, on paper, and through in-person interviews. In one example, teens attending a class about biotechnology were interviewed using a survey designed to measure outcomes for “Education/Lifelong Learning.” Participants ranked the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with statements measuring knowledge, confidence, application, and awareness. Results showed that 85% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they learned something helpful, while only 43% agreed or strongly agreed that they intended to apply what they just learned. The results demonstrated some improvement in subject knowledge, information that can be useful for advocacy. But it also revealed that there’s room for growth in ensuring program participants understand how they can apply what they’re learning. In an open-ended question asking what they liked most about the program, teens mentioned the chemical experiments conducted during the program. This type of data is something that we can pay attention to when planning future programs.

Continue reading 30 Days of Teen Programming: Project Outcome & Field-Based Examples of Measuring Outcomes of Young Adult Services

App of the Week: Pursuit of Light

Title: Pursuit of Light
Cost: $1.99
Platform: iOS 7 or later

pursuit of light logo Pursuit of Light is a game in which players have to move through a set of challenges in order to help the main character reach the light. The challenges get harder as the game play progresses and as higher levels are reached more trouble-shooting and critical thinking skills are required. The video below provides a brief overview of how the game works.

Continue reading App of the Week: Pursuit of Light

YALSA Exec committee Update

On April 17^th YALSA’s Executive Committee met by conference call for its semi-annual meeting to discuss several ongoing and two new issues. The agenda and related documents for this meeting can be found in theGovernance section of YALSA’s web site. Some highlights from the meeting include:

Talking through possible next steps in order to advance YALSA’s strategic planning effort. YALSA will be putting out an RFP to identify a consultant who can support YALSA leaders as we work to become more outcomes focused and to develop a new plan for YALSA that aligns with the Futures Report
Thinking about how the work of the relatively new board standing committees can be organized to best support the mission of YALSA and increase the impact of the great work that member committees, juries, taskforces and advisory boards do
Discussing the draft FY16 budget and talking about how best to prioritize activities and align resources in order to best support members in the coming fiscal year
Reviewing the recommendations from the Selection Committee Evaluation Taskforce, whose work has focused on examining the six award committees to look for opportunities to improve or streamline processes in order to make the work of these groups easier and more coordinated.

There were two items we did not have time to get to, but that we plan to explore in our virtual work space: determining an oversight process for YALSA’s upcoming teen programming database and thinking about targeted member recruitment. The minutes of this meeting can be found in the Governance section of YALSA’s web site. It’s important to note that YALSA’s Executive Committee is not the decision making body of the organization, and that no decisions were made during the meeting. The Committee may, however, decide to advance some of the discussions and/or make some recommendations to the board for their meeting in June. YALSA’s Board of Directors has just begun to explore the topics and issues they feel are a priority to discuss at their June meeting, If you have any recommendations for areas of focus for the board, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. It’s an exciting time for YALSA and I’m grateful to be able to work on behalf of such enthusiastic and creative members!

30 Days of Teen Programming: Delivering what the community wants & needs

One of my favorite sections of the Teen Programming Guidelines (is it nerdy to have favorite sections?) is “Align programs with community and library priorities.” But you have to be deeply involved with community agencies and activities in order to be ready to act on the community’s priorities as they arise. This sounds obvious (and it is!), but it’s taken me a few years to figure it out.

Several years back my coworker and I began working with the Seattle Youth Employment Program (SYEP). SYEP is a city agency that places youth with barriers in paid internships in a variety of environments in city government and the private sector. It also provides them with job training and academic support. We worked with SYEP staff to design a curriculum that would build the interns’ digital and information literacy skills. We were sometimes surprised by the needs identified by SYEP staff and the interns’ employers: touch typing, for example, and basic MS Word. We learned a lot about putting our own assumptions aside.

Over the years, we continually evaluated and adjusted the program. We dropped some pieces and added others to make it as relevant as possible to the youth’s needs and the needs of their employers.

This year, Seattle’s mayor put forth a huge Youth Employment Initiative in which he asked SYEP to more than double the number of youth placed in jobs over the summer. Suddenly, the community had spoken: youth employment was a major need. Because we already had an ongoing relationship with SYEP, the library was poised to expand the partnership to serve more youth with our trainings. We also helped in other ways, like providing meeting rooms for SYEP staff trainings. Next summer, the mayor intends to make the program five times larger than it is this year (eep!), which will present a huge opportunity for library involvement.

Of course, being in the right place at the time is always partly a matter of luck. But you can’t be lucky if you’re not out there.

Instagram of the Week – April 27

A brief look at ‘grams of interest to engage teens and librarians navigating this social media platform.

Showing off those new books and media!

Spring is in the air and new books and media items are popping up on our shelves. Now, how do we help our teens pick them and take them home? It’s interesting to see the variation in library posts that spread the word about new materials. Some post photos as soon as those delivery boxes are unpacked or as the books are nearly finished with processing. Others share a photo of all of the books in the new section or highlight one title with a brief summary or review. Participating in weekly columns such as #bookfacefriday and #fridayreads or April’s spine poetry contests can be another way to spotlight new titles in the collection. In addition to drumming up interest for new materials, these posts provide a great opportunity to remind our patrons that items can be placed on hold.

How do you show off your new materials? Have you found an approach that generates the most interest? Share with us in the comments section below!

Continue reading Instagram of the Week – April 27

30 Days of Teen Programming: Organic teen-led programming

Before last summer, whenever I heard the term “teen-led programming,” this feeling of ennui would descend upon me like a black cloud. Okay, I exaggerate a bit, but let’s just say I felt . . . defeated.

I loved the concept. How exciting to have programming not only for teens, but led by teens! What better way to offer programming that is relevant and exciting for them? But even with an active Teen Advisory Board, I had never been able to make it happen. No one ever had the time, commitment, or desire to do the work of leading a program.

Then, last summer I planned and facilitated a Teen Writing Camp that was well attended by both teen program regulars and newbies. We did all kinds of writing exercises, talked to YA authors via Skype and in-person visits, ate snacks, and generally had a great time. And then it was over, and we all moved on to other things.

That’s when the ennui-busting magic happened.

Continue reading 30 Days of Teen Programming: Organic teen-led programming

30 Days of Teen Programming: Preparing Teens for Life through Creative Programming

When we plan programs for teens, how do we create programs that will teach them something useful, but still fun and exciting? We can search the web, ask our colleagues for ideas, and look in old library school textbooks, but, ultimately, our journey begins with the Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents.

When we look closely at the 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents, the general framework focuses on the external and internal assets that can be found in a teen’s environment, which helps them develop. According to the Search Institute:

“The 40 Developmental Assets follow “building blocks of healthy development—known as Developmental Assets—that help young children grow up healthy, caring, and responsible”

What’s great about these developmental assets is that we already offer programs that support one or more of these assets. Although we can’t hit every single asset (much to our chagrin), we can cover many of these building blocks by creating programs that ensure our teens are getting the support, encouragement, and opportunity to grow and learn in the library; by incorporating several developmental assets within our programs, we can help teens discover new things, which will inspire and entice them to come into the library with their friends to learn more. If we want to lure new teens, and current teens, I highly recommend introducing these programs during the annual summer reading program.

Continue reading 30 Days of Teen Programming: Preparing Teens for Life through Creative Programming

30 Days of Teen Programming: Staff programs sufficiently and appropriately.

Staffing situations vary from library to library based on a number of factors including population served, budget, and organizational structure. So who gets to staff programs? YALSA’s guidelines lay out a number of considerations to take into account whenever making staff and volunteer assignments for a program, no matter our size or structure. Points 6.3 and 6.5 in particular consider the different roles that staff and volunteers take.

6.3: Consider which tasks are best suited to librarians and which are more suited to paraprofessionals, community partners and mentors, adult volunteers or Friends of the Library, and teen volunteers and participants.

With any program, someone needs to take the leadership role and accept responsibility for everything (the good and the bad) that comes of it. I find this is most often the person (usually a librarian) who pitches the program, and who believes in it enough to carry through with it. Whether hiring a presenter or relying on a crew of regular volunteers, the program leader needs to know (or find how to find) the answers to any question anyone may have about it from the time it first goes on the program schedule to three weeks afterward, when someone calls to ask when the next one will take place. The librarian leading a program is also most often the person charged with enforcing the rules as in, “Sorry, this a teen program for teens only.”

Continue reading 30 Days of Teen Programming: Staff programs sufficiently and appropriately.

30 Days of Teen Programming: Teen Service Learning

Texas A&M Commerce Habitat for Humanity photo of two teen girls working on a house I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we mean when we say “teen program.” When I started in libraries a teen program was a very specific thing – for the public library it was an out-of-school time event that teens might be involved in creating, and that always had a beginning, a middle, and an end. (Coming up with an idea, planning out the idea, implementing the idea.) It might be a yoga program or a duct tape program or a how to get into college program or a series on creating robots. All very specific and focused. Once the one-off program or series was over that was it, we moved on to the next “program.” As I continue to think about teen services in light of the YALSA Programming Guidelines and the YALSA Future of Libraries for and with Teens: A Call to Action report, I am more and more convinced that we don’t serve teens as successfully as we might by defining “program” in such a narrow way.

Instead, we need to think more broadly and focus on a larger-scale framework that focuses on specific outcomes and enables library staff working with teens the ability to meet a variety of teens’ interests and needs and at the same time give teens opportunities to gain skills that help them to succeed in life.
Continue reading 30 Days of Teen Programming: Teen Service Learning