100 Books Before College

by

I’m sure most librarians have heard of 1000 Books Before Kindergarten. We’ve been running that program at the Middletown Township Public Library for two years now, and the children and their parents love it. I was joking with my colleague one day that there should be a 100 Books Before College for high school students. And I thought…well actually, why not? So I started to plan.

So what is 100 Books Before College? It is a new low key reading program geared toward high school students. I have over 100 teen volunteers in my volunteer program, and many of them tell me they are too busy to read (not all of them, but many of them). This program is meant to encourage high school students to read for fun, despite their busy schedules of sports, homework, clubs, volunteering, and more. On my publicity for the program, I include the value in reading regularly: improve your cognitive skills, your reading comprehension, and maybe even your test scores!  Being an avid reader will help any student as they make their way beyond high school to college, vocational school, or a career.

The goal for the reading program: read 100 books before you graduate high school. I created a list of 100 suggested books to read, which has a mixture of classic and current fiction and nonfiction. Participants are encouraged to use the list as a guide, but they are not required to read these books. They can read any books that interest them!

I also asked the Princeton Review to donate prizes for those who complete the challenge. They have generously donated swag bags! So, students have 4 years to read 100 books, and at the end they get a Princeton Review swag bag and a book from the library. But the real prize? A sense of accomplishment and better reading skills!!

So how does it work? High schoolers can sign up online, and they simply log each book they read. They may write book reviews, but this is completely optional. I also have bi-monthly book raffles for participants. Anyone who is signed up for the program can enter for the chance to win a book or book set. This month’s prize is a set of Sherlock Holmes books! I used the program Wandoo Reader for the online program. We use Wandoo Reader for our summer reading program at the Middletown Library. As we already have this service, we might as well utilize it all year round!

I launched the 100 Books Before College program on September 1st, 2017. I started publicizing it in July 2017, and I sent it to all of my contacts at our local high schools. We already have 133 teens signed up! What I also love is, the majority of the teens signed up have never participated in the Teen Summer Reading Program. I notice each year that the bulk of TSR participants are middle schoolers. I’m thrilled to see high school students participate in a reading program at the library for the first time.

I am so excited about this program. I can’t wait for the first person to finish the 100 book challenge! So far the 133 teens have read a total of 778 books! I’ll continue to publicize and try to involve as many teens as I can. Will you take the Challenge?

Stephanie Chadwick is the Teen Librarian for The Middletown Township Public Library.

Connected Learning at a High-Tech High School

by

The YALSA Programming Guidelines help YA library staff plan, create, and evaluate teen programs. In this month’s blog, Michele Rivera, Digital Learning Specialist (aka Librarian) at Sheridan Technical High School in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, explains how she designs “interest-based, developmentally appropriate programs that support connected learning.”

Blogger: Michele, I know that Sheridan Tech is a public magnet high school, what else do we need to know?

Rivera: Like our two “sister” schools in Broward County, Atlantic Tech and McFatter Tech, students who wish to enroll in our school must meet certain academic criteria and enrollment is limited to 600 students. But Sheridan Tech is unique because it was founded on the commitment to a blended learning environment – combining face-to-face instruction with online curriculum, support, and resources. Every student is issued their own laptop. In their first two years, students attend their academic classes full-time on campus, with all their lessons and support available online. In their junior and senior years, they are enrolled half-time in academic classes, and half-time in their chosen technical program. Sheridan Tech offers over twenty different technical career choices, ranging from Automotive Service Technology to Practical Nursing. Students can graduate with a college-ready diploma, articulated college credit, as well as industry certification in their technical field. It is definitely not the old model most people think of as a “vocational school.”

Sheridan Tech Innovative Learning Center

Read More →

NaNoWriMo Writing Programs on Programming HQ

by

Looking for some great inspiration for writing programs as you plan your November calendar? Check out YALSA’s programming HQ for some engaging ideas to help celebrate NaNoWriMo. For more information on National Novel Writing month visit the site here. This initiative is in its 19th year as the ‘largest writing event in the world’. Individuals, classrooms, teams, and more ‘come together’ across the globe virtually and through writing to start a 50,000 word novel. Skills including setting and achieving milestones, confidence building, and story writing are just some of the many outcomes of being a part of this super exciting project! 

Even if teens at your library aren’t into writing a novel, chances are one of these writing programs will interest them!

Here’s a few to get you started:

Description: An event focusing on creativity, writing, and zine making was centered around the teen graphic memoir Little Fish: A Memoir from a Different Kind of Year by Ramsey Beyer. This program was generously funded through a Teen Read Week grant supported by YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. 

Description: Have students write a poem from the perspective of a fiction character in a book.  This ties fiction, poetry, and writing together. Optional: Do a contest where teens guess what character from what book the poem is written and give away a prize for who gets the most poems right. 

Description: www:]thewebcomicproject. is a three-day event encompassing the concept, development, and creation of a webcomic. Each meeting will last 1-2 hours.

The YALSA Programming HQ would like to showcase even more teen writing programs! If you have one to submit, visit the site here: http://hq.yalsa.net, create an account to login and select the ‘post a program’ button. Sharing your program with others is a great way to grow the successes you’ve already experienced with others and help everyone get ready to celebrate a month of writing, no matter how teens choose to do it!

Bringing the BFYA Teen Feedback Session to Kansas City

by

For any YALSA member, the Teen Feedback Session of Best Fiction for Young Adults is a highlight of attending ALA’s Annual Conference or Midwinter Meeting. It isn’t just getting the feedback on what titles teens liked from this year’s publishing cycle…but seeing teens up at the mic, sharing their thoughts with marketers, editors, agents and library staff. It’s empowering and reminds us why we do what we do. After experiencing the Midwinter 2017 BFYA Teen Feedback Session, we began to think about how we could get our teens to the conference at Annual.

Chicago and Denver are the closest ALA’s conference ever comes to Kansas City (although KC is a large city, we don’t have the conference facilities to host ALA)  That means our teens will never have the chance to experience and reap the benefits of  the BFYA Teen Feedback Session. They will never have the awesome power of addressing the committee and a room of library staff and publishers. And on a late spring day in Kansas City…we decided to change that.

Three YALSA members from two library systems – Amanda Barnhart from Kansas City Public Library (MO), and Peggy Hendershot and Kate McNair from Johnson County Library (KS) – came together to talk about the BFYA Teen Feedback Session. Our grand idea was to figure out a way to take teens to Chicago and get them on the mic…but soon learned that there are ample teens in Chicago waiting their turn and we wouldn’t steal their moment to speak up. We still wanted to empower our teens and give them the opportunity to speak out and be heard, so we went back to the drawing table and came up with an idea that would impact more teens than we could have fit into a van on a roadtrip to Chicago…

Talk Book To Me was born. In line with YALSA’s Futures Report goal of designing programs with teens’ passions and interests at the heart that are strongly connected to academic and career achievement, we identified four goals for the program. 1) Give teens the tools to analyze a book and express their thoughts in the form of a review. 2) Amplify their voices to BFYA committee members, editors, agents and library staff. 3) Unlock opportunities for teens to build a portfolio of accomplishments.

Read More →

Check it out: Teen Literacies Toolkit

by

Back in February 2017, I wrote about my experience creating a toolkit in one day at Midwinter. It was a great experience and our group got a lot done in one day. We submitted our first draft to YALSA and waited to see what would happen next. Like any good piece of writing, our first draft wasn’t our best draft. So back to the drawing board we went. After several revisions, multiple Zoom conversations, and dozens of Google Doc comments back and forth, we are very proud to report that our Teen Literacies Toolkit has been published!

In this toolkit, we use the lens of fake news to examine literacy skills and programs you can do to help your teens. We propose this lens helps us understand the digital environment many of our teens live in and how we can help them better understand that world. What I think is great about the toolkit is the various ways you can use it. For example, you can:

  • Read the whole thing, cover to cover. Reading the whole toolkit allows you to dive into a little literacy theory, along with pushing you to reflect on the things you currently do with your teens and how you can create impactful programming based on their needs (check out page 10, the section on Embedding Multiple Literacies into Programming and Instruction).
  • Jump into the toolkit and go straight for the potential programs. We spent a lot of time coming up with various “ready-to-go” programs for those who just want those meaty resources. For example, starting on page 4 there’s a list for 15 ways to create a literacy-rich environment, or go to page 14 for Activity Ideas (and see the Appendix for some worksheets).
  • Because we are using fake news as our lens to explore multiple literacies, we have a nice section on how teens search for information and their media environment. Starting on page 6, we explore that environment, while providing some activities to help your teens be a bit more critical with what they are looking at online.
  • We also created a hearty section of “Recommended Resources,” many with short annotations on why we selected those sources. They start on page 15 and include current articles, published research, videos to watch with your teens, activity plans, and more.
  • Our toolkit ends with an Appendix with additional resources. For those in a strategic planning position, you might be interested in our Literacies Program Planning Template. This template takes you through the steps of creating programs that combine multiple literacies as well as being intentional with outcomes and assessment measures. This template compliments our “Embedding Multiple Literacies into Programming and Instruction” section, which begins on page 10.

It feels great to have this toolkit published and we want to hear from you! Let us know your thoughts on the toolkit. What did you like about it? Did any sections resonate with you (and why)? Have you tried any of the things mentioned in the toolkit at your own library? Did the toolkit inspire any other thoughts that you want others to know while checking out the toolkit? 

Big shout out to the rest of the group (Kristin, Jennifer, Trent, Renee, Allison, and Julie) who helped write this toolkit and thanks to YALSA for turning our Google Doc into this beautiful toolkit.

  

One Week, One Story @ Jaffrey Public Library

by

Thanks to a Teen Read Week Activity grant by YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, Jaffrey Public Library is collaborating with independent comic book store Escape Hatch to foster local teens’ writing and artistic talents for One Week, One Story as our primary Teen Read Week initiative. The purpose is to take the mystery out of the creative process and empower teens to cultivate their artistic skills with autonomy and confidence, providing the tools for them to continue to do so well beyond the end of the program. One Week, One Story involves participants attending a workshop to create their own comics for publication in a bound anthology.

The library will host graphic novelist Marek Bennett to teach a time-challenge comic workshop on October 9, which is also a school holiday. Marek has had a lot of success teaching time-challenge workshops, such as On your mark, get set, draw! during last year’s summer program, and can speak from experience about how time constraints can free artists from perfectionism. His nonfiction graphic novel The Civil War Diary of Freeman Colby is also on this year’s YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, so he is able to speak to the entire publication process from creation to marketing one’s work post-publication. After a 3-hour workshop (and pizza) with Marek to learn the basic process of creating a comic book, teens may opt to attend social write-ins in the evenings to polish their works and collaborate for feedback. A final reception at the end of the week gives teens the opportunity to share their work with the wider community and celebrate having completed their comics.

In preparation for the initiative, the library has purchased graphics tablets and editing software so that participants may learn to use the tools typically used by graphic novelists today. The library will also bolster its collection of graphic novels and books about creating graphic novels to provide further references for participants. Throughout Teen Read Week, participants may reserve a graphics tablet to digitize their stories. The library will host a workshop that covers the basics of how to use the hardware and software, or participants may set up a one-on-one tutorial with a librarian.

At the end of One Week, One Story, teens who choose to do so may submit their completed comics for publication. Escape Hatch recently launched an independent publishing venture and will publish the teens’ work in a bound anthology. All participants, regardless of whether they chose to submit their work, will receive a copy of the anthology. Escape Hatch will hold a book release party to launch the teens’ work and will make copies available to purchase.

By providing teens with the information and tools to create, as well putting the tangible results of their efforts in teens’ hands, we aim to strengthen literacy skills and inspire a genuine excitement in authorship. Furthermore, we hope that seeing their friends’ work published inspires teens who do not participate. We will harness the momentum generated by Teen Read Week to implement further programming and independent creative efforts using the tools and resources purchased for the program.

Julie Perrin is the director of the Jaffrey Public Library in Jaffrey, NH.  Andrea Connolly is the Youth Services Librarian.  Their library is a recipient of a Teen Read Week Activity grant from YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation.

Civic Data Zine Camp

by

Since 2012, The Labs@CLP (Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh) has provided Pittsburgh teens a digital learning space where they can explore new technologies and hone existing skills. We were one of the fortunate programs designated as an IMLS Learning Lab grantee, and our programming continues to develop our curriculum of teen-driven connected learning. Recent additions include a process through which teens can earn badges as they practice and refine new Labs skills, a transition into some of our neighborhood locations that have not yet received weekly Labs programming and equipment, and the annual Labsy Awards, which recognize the creativity and innovation of local teens. Over the last five years, this unique initiative has evolved and extended its reach into new locations, new disciplines, and new avenues of creativity.

Each summer, we invite groups of teens into our libraries to participate in what we call The Labs Summer Skills Intensives. Partnerships with local organizations like 1Hood Media and Pittsburgh Filmmakers, along with individual artists with unique specializations, allow us to explore a specific aspect of literacy—from songwriting to street art to sound recording—in a creative way. Each teen earns $100 for attending the entire week, and bus passes are available for anyone who might need one. These week-long camps give teens a platform for intimate engagement and complete immersion, and the results are extraordinary. In our camps, teens have produced music videos, written original songs, sewn their own fashion projects, and much more.

We saw The Labs Intensive formula as a great opportunity to highlight our teens’ expertise about their communities, while also increasing the reach of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Beyond Big Data initiative. Part of this effort involves the inclusion of data literacy programming into our existing repertoire, and we soon created a curriculum that would allow us to explore open data with a brilliant group of civically-minded teens. On July 31, we grabbed our supplies and headed to CLP – Squirrel Hill for the first day of Data Zine Camp.

The goals of this Intensive were the following:

  • To identify data as it impacts our everyday lives;
  • To think critically about data;
  • To practice storytelling using data;
  • To examine a personal, civic, or national issue through the lens of data; and
  • To create a Data Zine that documents not only our findings, but our process.

We began the week by introducing our partner, PublicSource. This local journalism network is unique because of its data-driven perspective, and its ability to amplify the compelling stories within data. Throughout our camp, the data journalists at PublicSource led us in fact-finding adventures, examined biases through critical discussion, and introduced us to a variety of data visualization tools and techniques.

Read More →

Teen Read Week @ Buckfield Junior Senior High School

by

A recovering “core subject is best and what matters most” English Teacher, I am relatively new to the library scene.  After being chosen for this grant, I began to consider how it really is not just me or the library or even the school that received this award, but each individual student that attends this school.  I have the privilege of teaching Library Skills and Digital Citizenship to all of the 7th and 8th grade students.  Like many High School Librarians, I have no assigned teaching time with the students.  I see them when they come from Freshman English to check out outside readings for class, and sporadically from Science and History classes when students have research projects to complete.   So how was I to get information to achieve my goals and complete the programs I developed for Teen Read Week?  I would accomplish this through our school’s Advisory Program.

To prepare for Teen Read Week all students in their advisories have completed a twenty-six question Interest Inventory.  For the purposes of Teen Read Week and the programming that will occur, eight of the questions will be scrutinized and data is being gathered. 

The following is the letter I attached to the surveys:

Advisors:

 

Please have your advisees fill out the Interest Inventory that I have included here.

 

This survey is part of an effort to increase student involvement in LMC (Library Media Center) acquisitions.  As a result of this survey and related Teen Read Week library programming that will occur October 8-14, our LMC will be able to purchase books that student groups have selected in the amount of about $900.  Please let students know that their participation makes this donation of money for book purchases possible. 

 

Surveys need to be completed and returned to me by Friday, September 8, 2017.  If any students are absent please have them complete the survey on Monday, September 11, 2017.

 

Please also ask students interested in becoming part of a Teen Reader’s Advisory Group to see me for more information.

 

Thank you to all of the faculty and students.  I look forward to working with you throughout the year!

Mrs. Reinstein, Librarian

 

With special thanks to: Dollar General and YALSA

  

I was very pleased that students were excited to know that their participation in the survey meant that we could have some new books in our library and not only would there be new books, but books that were based on their interests and suggestions.

I am looking forward to aggregating the data to continue my implementation of programming and sharing how it goes. 

 

Maria Reinstein is the Library Media Specialist at Buckfield Junior Senior High School, in Buckfield, Maine. Maria has shared her love of literature, rhetoric, drama, and writing through teaching and co-curricular activities since 1995.  She began teaching as a University Faculty member at the Komi State Pedagogical Institute in Syktyvkar, Russia before returning home to Maine and before becoming a full time High School English Teacher.  She has developed two Advanced Placement English courses, is a state certified mentor for new teachers, has completed a national program in Trails to Every Classroom, and has recently finished her second master’s degree, this time in Library and Information Science.

Maria’s interests beyond the classroom include writing, playing music, gardening, cooking, canoeing, kayaking, hiking, camping, and nordic and alpine skiing. Maria lives with her husband, their three children, and their two dogs in Turner, Maine.

Banned Books Week Approaches

by

Recently I spoke on a panel discussing graphic novels and their representation of sex education and self-acceptance from an LGBT perspective. The conference, called Flame Con, has taken place for the last three years in Brooklyn, NY and focuses on pop culture with an LGBT lens. As part of the panel we discussed what exists on this topic for all ages including children and teens. In our conversation, we touched on why these titles are important and whether they live on the shelves of libraries. They mostly do, but in my preparation, I found myself on ALA’s Banned Books Week page and saw that many of the books that I know and love for their inclusivity were among the most challenged for 2016. In fact, the top five of the ten were challenged due to their inclusion of LGBT characters. Other reasons these books were challenged focused on sexual content, lewd language, and violence. To see the top ten list of 2016, which includes picture books, graphic novels, YA titles and more, click here.

According to ALA’s Banned Books Week page, “Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers — in shared support of the freedom to seek and express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” This year Banned Books Week is taking place from September 24th – 30th toting the hashtag #wordshavepower. Let’s show our unity as we fight for our teen’s right to read what they need.

This week allows us as librarians and advocates to shine a spotlight on those books that others want to put in the dark. Censorship of these titles silences the voices of the authors and puts blinders on our readers. It effects our First Amendment rights as readers. As we all know, representation in young adult literature is paramount to the teens that we serve. Whether those books are windows or mirrors for the readers we must make sure our patrons can either see themselves in a book or learn about the lives of others through what they read. If we do not fight against these challenges our teen patrons will continue to find the books they need censored.

So how can ALA and YALSA help you? Take a look at our resource pages on Banned Books Week and the Office for Intellectual Freedom. There are tools located there that can help you report challenged titles, get support for these challenges, and build a rock-solid collection development policy. So you know what you may be facing here are definitions from ALA’s Challenge Support site:

  • A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.
  • Censorship is a change in the access status of material, based on the content of the work and made by a governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes.
  • Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.

The Challenge Support site also goes on to explain you can contact the Office for Intellectual Freedom whenever you hear even the slightest rumbling around a book at your library. They even give you the contact information right on the page! We’ll share it here for even easier access: For assistance with challenges to library materials, services, or programs, please contact Kristin Pekoll at the Office for Intellectual Freedom, 800-545-2433, ext. 4221, or via email: kpekoll@ala.org. Granted it can be scary when something is challenged in your collection, but remember we are all in this together (that may or may not be a High School Musical reference – don’t censor me!).

In the meantime, when you are not dealing with a live challenge, celebrate those books that have been banned in the past. Make a display of the books or put a list of the books on a bulletin board. Ask your teens or colleagues what their favorite Banned Books are and show them off. We can be advocates for our teens and their literature in whatever way we choose – whenever we choose. As YALSA members and/or teen librarians we sometimes house the most controversial books in our collections so be brave, report challenges, and advocate for Banned Books.

For everyday Advocacy information, be sure to check out YALSA’s Advocacy Page and Toolkit!

Derek Ivie is the Youth Services Coordinator at the Suffolk Cooperative Library System in Bellport, NY. He has served on many booklist and award committees, and is currently serving as a Board Member at Large for the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).

LITTLE FISH, BIG STORIES: A TEEN READ WEEK PROGRAM

by

When I read Ramsey Beyer’s graphic memoir Little Fish: A Memoir from a Different Kind of Year, I knew that I wanted to incorporate it into the teen programming at the Homer Township Public Library. Little Fish documents Beyer’s first year of college through illustrations, diary entries, comic panels, and lists. Because of its easy-to-digest graphic style, it is accessible to both low and high level readers, and it explores common themes in the lives of teenagers: finding an identity as a young adult, forging new friendships, battling insecurities, and adjusting to life’s changes.

The memoir stayed on my mind until the right fit came along through a Teen Read Week grant provided by YALSA and Dollar General Literacy Foundation. As a grant recipient, I created a program entitled Little Fish, Big Stories that centers on creativity, storytelling, and zine making that parallel’s the theme of this year’s Teen Read Week, Unleash Your Story.

As they register, teens will be given a copy of Little Fish to read and keep. At the event, they will conduct an interview with Beyer via Skype to learn about her creative process and why it was beneficial to share her experience as a teenager through a graphic memoir. I am thrilled that these teens will have direct access to a published author who will reveal the ways that writing her story and reading the stories of others have made a positive impact on her life.

The program will then focus on creating pages for a collaborative zine highlighting the participants’ own voices. They will browse zines (self-published works of writing and art) to see the range of stories being shared through this medium, then discuss ideas for writing topics as a group. Teens will choose a subject, then create their own pages to be included in the zine. Copies of the finished zine will be given to all participants and distributed to other teens within the library. Teens will go home with materials to encourage them to continue writing and sharing, including a journal and a handful of zines.

Little Fish, Big Stories will encourage teens to seek out non-fiction writing that engages them, and it will demonstrate that zine making is an accessible, cost-effective means of sharing their experiences. And yet all teens in our community will benefit from this awarded grant, as some of the funds will go to purchasing high-interest memoirs and biographies, along with expanding the library’s teen zine collection.

Teens will leave the event feeling the power in amplifying their voice. They will see that publishing a zine — or even a book — is an achievable goal and that they will find support for this goal at their library. They will learn how to create and publish their own zine, and they will gain a sense of accomplishment and pride found in channeling their emotions into a work of creativity. Their communication skills will be enriched, and they will find joy in working with their peers to tell their story and create a tangible work of art.

I can’t wait to watch the teens in my community unleash their stories. It’s going to be wild.

Heather Colby is the Teen Services Coordinator and Information Services Librarian at the Homer Township Public Library in Homer Glen, IL.