Learning with YALSA This Summer

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drawing of hands raised The teens in your community might be out of school for the summer (or just about to get out of school) however, library staff never stop learning. That’s why YALSA has some great options for you to keep your learning going this summer. Here’s what’s on YALSA’s continuing education calendar for June, July, and August:

New E-Course

Start at the End: Backward Design for Library Programming
7/8/2019 – 8/11/2019

This new online course, taught by Casey Rawson, a Teaching Assistant Professor at UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, gives participants the chance think about what they would like their library activities for and with teens to achieve. Then with that in mind work backwards to determine what programs they might provide in order to reach that goal/impact. During the five week course participants will learn about the backwards design framework for planning. They will also have the chance to develop learning goals for their activities for and with teens and through those goals better articulate the value of the work that they do. You can learn more and register for this e-course on the YALSA website.
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YALSAblog Tweets of the Week – November 13, 2015

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A short list of tweets from the past week of interest to teens and the library staff that work with them.

Do you have a favorite Tweet from the past week? If so add it in the comments for this post. Or, if you read a Twitter post between November 13 and November 19 that you think is a must for the next Tweets of the Week send a direct or @ message to lbraun2000 on Twitter.
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30 Days of Teen Programming: Teen Service Learning

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Texas A&M Commerce Habitat for Humanity photo of two teen girls working on a houseI’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.
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