Category Archives: Continuous Learning

When I was a teenager I thought that I’d graduate college and be done with learning. For my generation learning wasn’t something people talked about as taking place out of the classroom or as taking place throughout one’s entire life. It wasn’t until after college that I really began to understand that learning never stops. As that is the case, the YALSA Teen Services Competencies for Library Staff content area on Continuous Learning is important to pay attention to and reflect on.

In the Continuous Learning content area the Developing level includes the phrases “seeks knowledge” and “seeks new knowledge.” I’ve been thinking about these phrases a lot lately and in particular thinking about how these phrases point out that the learning needed is action oriented. Library staff have to actively participate in learning in order to support teens in the community successfully.

What does it take to be an active learner?

• Being ready to do hard work. No one should ever expect that learning is easy. Learning might be fun or energizing or interesting. And, in many cases it is probably going to be hard work. The work comes with deeply engaging with the content. The work comes with constantly reflecting on how the learning relates to the work you do with and for teens. And, the work comes with moving outside of what you think you know and what you think is best. Instead you need to work hard to learn about what teens need and think about how you can support those needs in your local community. This hard work can come with asking questions while at a professional development session, talking to people you may never have met before, going out in the community and building relationships, and so on.
• Being open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. Sometimes library staff think that new ideas and new ways of doing things in some way reflects poorly on how the job was done previously. That’s not the case at all. The work library staff do with and for teens is always changing as the world in which teens live is constantly changing. Doing things in new ways doesn’t mean the old way was bad it just means that it no longer resonates with what teens need today.
• Being ready to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is a good thing. As a 2014 Psychology Today article states: Read More →

YALSAblog posts throughout this month focused on different aspects of the Teen Services Competencies for Library Staff. Authors covered topics related to specific content areas of the Competencies – Teen Growth and Development and Cultural Competency and Responsiveness for example – and ideas related to the implications the Competencies can have on the library as an institution – for example job descriptions and policies. You can read all Competencies related posts by searching the Competencies tag on this blog.

YALSA will continue to provide opportunities for library staff to discuss and learn about the dispositions and content areas covered in the Competencies. We’ll do that through blog posts, 10 months of free webinars that begin in March, and Twitter chats that also start in March.

You can learn more about building high-quality teen services with YALSA’s wide-variety of resources. These include: Read More →