Summer Youth Leaders Wrap-Up @ Pearl Bailey Library

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We’ve checked in with our Summer Youth Leaders here and here, and this is Pearl Bailey Library’s final post of the summer.

The youth have helped serve the library and the community in a variety of ways, thanks to the generosity of the Dollar General Literacy Foundation and YALSA. They helped serve over 400 people at the Wickham Avenue Alliance Summer Ice Cream Social event, and assisted us in advertising the library’s services and collections at that event.

In addition they had fun participating in an “adulting” event called the Reality Store, where each Youth Leader had to manage a hypothetical family budget.

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Dollar General Grant Winner: The Summer of Teens and STEAM Camps

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For the past two years, Defiance Public Library System (DPLS) has been in the process of revamping the summer reading program by changing the name to Summer BreakOUT and focusing on the whole child. DPLS eliminated the reading requirement and instead made reading one of the possible activities participants could choose to do. Participants could track their activities online or they could choose to play using the paper gameboard.

Eric, Defiance intern

Despite these efforts numbers are dropping. This year our goal was to increase Summer BreakOUT participation through the use of STEAM Camps and a partnership with the summer food program. The STEAM Camps were held over the course of three days for three hours each day. The camps were further divided into three grade level groups: 1-3, 4-6, and 6-8. The DPLS Youth Services Department serves three locations; with minimal staffing and lofty goals we were blessed to have received the YALSA/Dollar General Teen Summer Internship Program grant.

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Dollar General Grant Winner: Teen Interns Support STEAM Programming at North Shelby Library

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The North Shelby Library in Birmingham, Alabama, was fortunate to win a 2018 YALSA/Dollar General Summer Teen Intern Grant which allowed us to select four interns. After we had more than 40 local rising 7th-12th grade students apply, our Friends group provided funds for four additional interns. Each intern was responsible for completing 30 hours of service which included their training day.

One of the main duties of the interns was to support the STEAM programming offered at the library so an interest in science, technology, engineering, art, or math was included as a requirement on the application. During the interview stage, we asked applicants their experience in teaching someone how to do something, if they had a favorite science experiment, and about any technology experience they might have had.

North Shelby Library Teen Interns before their Step into STEAM tween program. (L-R: Nicole Taylor, Stanley Stoutamire, Veronica Kloss, Ty Owes, Halla Stallworth, Mason Coleman, and Sam Reid)

The interns created their own STEAM program for tweens (defined as 8-12 year olds by the library). This program was planned during the last hour of the intern training. Before they started planning, the librarians demonstrated the technology that the library already owned and discussed the programs that were planned for Summer Reading to avoid duplication. The teens were also given budget parameters. The librarians then went to the other side of the room so that the interns could plan without expecting the adults to lead. On their evaluations of the program one of the interns reported that, “Everyone’s ideas were listened to during the planning of the program. We all worked together to come up with multiple ideas, then we picked our favorites. We rejected some ideas because they were similar to existing programs or they were too time consuming.” Another intern added, “A few of my ideas were rejected because they involved things that were too dangerous to be inside the library like fire and large amounts of electricity.”

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Dollar General Grant Winner: Hiring Teen Interns

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This summer, the Davenport Public Library was able to hire two teen interns thanks to the YALSA/Dollar General Teen Summer Internship Grant. The Library wanted to give creative and online-savvy teens a chance to see how their skills can be used in a workplace. We chose to create two distinct and specific internship opportunities in Art & Social Media where paying jobs are not often available for Teens, yet there is a high interest and potential for young people. In order to fill these unique internship positions, we first needed to create job descriptions, applications and an interview process.

Although, we received notification of the grant in early February, we quickly learned that we needed to start the hiring process ASAP. The Library formed a team of the HR Manager, the Youth Services & Programming Supervisor, and a Youth Services & Programming Librarian who would be working with the interns and also serves st the Social Media Team Leader. We wanted to post the job at the beginning of March and leave the posting up for about a month. We would then be able to narrow down applications and complete interviews in April and offer the position in early May (so we would have time, although not much, to reoffer the position to another applicant in May if someone turned it down). Since this was a summer internship position, there was no wiggle room nor pushing back the start date if something in the hiring process caused a delay.

Davenport Public Library 2018 Creative Literacy Intern Ariana Hill

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Using Teen Interns to Assist in Feeding Youth & the Community

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Summer break can be the hungriest time of the year for kids, but the Olathe Public Library in Olathe, Kansas was fighting hunger with a summer meal program at their two library locations. Youth were fed lunches Monday through Friday at both of library locations. On Fridays the community was also welcomed to participate in a free community lunch.

The Olathe Public Library received a generous grant from Dollar General to hire two interns during the 2018 summer programs. The two teen interns focused on assisting the one staff member run the lunch programs every week day starting from when school got out till the end of summer. Teen intern, Alexis Proctor, also assisted in showing movies and supervising the youth on Monday afternoons during the summer. Alexis completed almost a 100 hours this summer at our Downtown location.

Our second teen intern was Jackie Holst who completed almost 50 hours this summer at our Indian Creek location. She provided some much needed assistance to our seasonal staff member over the lunch programs by providing assistance with room set-up and leading the volunteers.

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Teen Gives Back to Community at the Public Library of Silver City

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For the summer of 2018, our library was approved for the YALSA/Dollar General Summer Teen Intern Grant. This was a wonderful opportunity for a lucky teen in our community to get broad experience working in a very busy but small public library. It was also great for our library to have a teen face for our summer reading program, not to mention the extra help in implementing all of our activities.

Historically our library has had a hard time reaching teenage patrons, but with an increased focus on improving the collection and opportunities for teen programs we are beginning to change that. Our intern for the summer, Logan, was a big help in not only engaging teenagers, but children of all ages.

Logan worked 16 hours a week gaining a thorough knowledge of how a small public library works and why it is valuable to the community. Over the summer Logan had the opportunity to learn from the different professional members of the staff to see what their job responsibilities are and why they enjoyed serving the community working in the Public Library. Logan was very helpful in setting up for programs, helping at the circulation and reference desks, and giving out prizes for the summer reading program. Logan’s biggest contributions were in helping us with our weekly crafts, makerspace, and library arcade.

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Dollar General Grant Winner: Jackson County Public Library

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I have discovered that hiring teenagers is an interesting process and is completely different from hiring adults. Teens might not know how to properly answer the phone or might have “jokes” set up as a voicemail message. They might not know how to answer interview questions and talk about their accomplishments.

This helped us realize that we needed to add an interviewing skills class to our programs. We learned that teens are all different and all awesome! We hired two teens who were as different as night and day – one quiet and introverted, one outgoing and self-directed – and loved having them both here!

Mary and Anna covering the Book Walk at our Medora SLP Family Fun Day

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Dollar General Grant Winner: Sioux Center Public Library

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Thanks so much to YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation for all they do to promote literacy through funding libraries. With the funding from their foundation, this year we were able to hire 3 teen interns from the community. Our interns were able to help with existing programs as well as design and implement one of their own programs.

Our Teen Interns were Tabetha, Aysha, and Philip; each had their strengths in helping out with programs. Tabetha and Aysha helped with our Summer Splash program where kids come and learn about the summer reading topic (Libraries Rock!) and create a craft relating to it. This year in Summer Splash, the interns helped with activities such as musical chairs, making kazoos out of popsicle sticks, and drums out of oatmeal containers. They were even able to share some of their musical abilities playing instruments like the cello.

Philip helped with programs such as Lego Club & STEM Club and lent his technology expertise. One of the teens implemented a Java Coding Class that met biweekly June through August where middle school age kids could learn about the basics of Java coding language on the Eclipse platform.

There was much that the teens learned in helping out with the programming and much that we learned as well, with this being our first time receiving this grant. The teens developed skills in leadership, punctuality, organizing, teamwork skills, and conflict resolution with the kids. We really appreciated having the teens help us and teaching them some valuable skills as well. Some of the teens’ takeaways or favorite moments of the program were making friends with the kids. They felt like they could fit in with them and get to know who they are. One of the interns said it was a great experience to learn behavior management, which will help with their future since they desire to be a teacher. Another said that they realized teaching is a good experience, but harder than they realized. They liked helping with classes and getting to watch kids make something whether they wrote a simple computer program or built a Lego Castle.

Maria Vander Plaats is the Teen Services Librarian & Program Assistant at the Sioux Center Public Library.

Back to the Basics: Why Getting Teens Writing is Important

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The Reading Public Library, Teen Loft located in Reading, PA provided three three-hour writing workshops this summer facilitated by professionals funded by the YALSA/Dollar General Summer Learning Grant.

  • Ekphrastic Poetry: Motivos, a bilingual print magazine run by founder/publisher and former ALA National presenter Jenee Chizick-Aguero, provided a workshop on ekphrastic poetry. Teens used the elements around them and drew inspiration from things that were familiar to them such as music, movies, and artwork to find their creative voice. Jenee also encouraged them to submit their writing to her magazine for publication. She also shared resources her magazine provided such as scholarship information. The RPL also subscribes to her magazine so that they are available at all times.

  • Short Story Writing: Young Adult author of Immaculate and Transcendent Katelyn Detweiler began with a discussion about how she got into writing, the challenges she faces and working for a publishing company in New York which gave teens insight into how a book is created from start to finish. Teens were then given prompts to help get them started.
  • Comic Book Panels: Author and artist Jean Esther taught teens how to make their own comic book and the challenges he faced when creating his own. He also spoke about his journey as an artist. The workshop started off with basic drawing tips and tricks they could use to bring their drawings to the next level. After they created their main characters, they were ready to work on their storylines and share their work.

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Dollar General Grant Winner: Eastern Shore Public Library

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In January of 2017, I took on the exciting challenge of becoming the first Youth Services Librarian for Eastern Shore Public Library, where we have 2 branch libraries and 2 affiliate libraries serving a rural community that includes the counties of Accomack and Northampton. I have never regretted it for a moment and find priceless daily rewards in my hours working with and for young people at the libraries.

The library system works hard to compensate for having a very small staff, so we were very excited to learn we had received the Teen Intern grant from YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation! We posted the positions online and created a press release which led to an ample number of applications for our two positions. We hired two teen interns, Anna and Jenninyah, for the summer (one for each of the branch libraries) to help with all of our Summer Reading Program events, Lunch at the Library programs, and our Garden Club at our Northampton Free Library in Nassawadox. In the early stages of implementing the Teen Intern Program, there were times when it felt as if the unexpected grant might be adding more to my workload rather than the hoped-for opposite. However, at this point, I can truly say I do not know how I would have managed without the support of my wonderful Teen Interns.

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