Saving an Unruly Storytime

Immediately upon starting the first book today, I knew this Storytime was in trouble. LOTS of squirrely kids, a few criers—This group was NOT WITH ME. It was glaringly obvious that the kids have been cooped up for days with our subzero temperatures. So I decided to blog the process of how I kept it together! 

Source

Here was my plan: (Yes, I color code. It gives me a quick visual on the balance of storytime activities. I also normally only read three of four planned books).

Theme: Night

(Opening Song) 1, 2, 3

(Book) When Sheep Sleep by Numeroff

Letter of the day with Fergus (LINK)

Count People--Parent message about counting higher than three five or ten

(Song/chant) Twinkle Twinkle Little Star—twinkle fingers for first part, wave arms overhead for second part

(Action activity/fingerplay) Here is a cup (LINK)

(Book) Shhhhhh! Everybody’s Sleeping by Markes

(Flannel Story) Five in the Bed (LINK)

(Fingerplay) This is my right hand (LINK)

(Book) Cornelius P. Mud, Are You Ready for Bed by Saltzberg

(Action activity/fingerplay) Oliver Twist-stick out not touch tongue  (LINK) 

(Book) Who Said Coo? by Ruddell

Sleeping Sleeping All the Children Sleeping Learned from this page on Perpetual Preschool, and you can see Mel's version here. 

(Closing Song) Storytime is over now/See you later (tune of London Bridge)

Hand Stamp

And here’s what I did. The red indicates all the decisions I made on the fly.

(Opening Song) 1, 2, 3—

(Book) When Sheep Sleep by Numeroff

I tried to make the book more interactive by adding animal sounds or motions on each page, but that wasn’t enough. So I skipped a few pages to get to the end. 

Next, I knew that we’d have to get some serious wiggles out for this storytime to work. I needed to convince the kids that I was super fun and worth listening to for the next 25 minutes! I decided to just do directed movements so I could get a good gauge on the group. “Ok everybody stand up and reach waaaaay up high. Wiggle those fingers. Now stretch your arms way out to the side. Now clap them together in front of you. Now stretch them out to the side annnnnnnnd...CLAP. Stretch them out to the side annnnnnnnnnd…CLAP. Clap fast! Clap slooooow. Great. Now let your hands fall to the side and clap over your head. Again! I did lots of repeating here and different commands to get them focused on me and following along. I made it suspenseful and pretty soon they were giggling and listening well. 

Once I had them with me I did started the “Show me five” game I like to play before starting a fingerplay. “Show me five (hold out hand with fingers out). Hide them! (ball fist). Fiiiiiiiiive—hide them! FIVE! THREE! Did I fool you? Five!” I do this several times, varying fast and slow and how many fingers I want to see. They love it. I most often use this to move into “Five Fat Peas” which I do as a full body motion fingerplay. We did Five Fat Peas three times before moving on to the Letter of the Day. 

Letter of the day with Fergus

Count People—Parent message about counting higher than three five or ten

(Song/chant) Twinkle Twinkle—twinkle fingers for first part, wave arms overhead for second part

(Action activity/fingerplay) Here is a cup

(Book) Shhhhhh! Everybody’s Sleeping (On each spread we put our finger to our lips and said shhhhhh)

(Flannel Story) Five in the Bed

(Fingerplay) This is my right hand

We went as planned for a while, but by the time we finished the fingerplay above many of them were spontaneously standing, and I realized they had been sitting for a while and were definitely not ready for a book. So I added one of our regular action activities, “I Can Jump Jump Jump” but I expanded it this time to include fast/slow versions of each movement to expend more energy. THEN we were ready to listen to our next book.

(Book) Cornelius P. Mud  Who Said Coo?

I switched the book here to Who Said Coo? Since Cornelius is more of a ‘list’ type story similar to Shhhhhhhh! Everybody’s Sleeping and I knew that Who Said Coo’s more cohesive plot and repetitive refrain would draw the kids in more.

(Action activity/fingerplay) Oliver Twist

(Book) Who Said Coo? At this point we only had two minutes left so we went right into the imagination game I had planned.

Sleeping Sleeping: All the Children Sleeping—bumblebees, snowflakes, dogs, pigs, horses          

(Closing Song) Storytime is over now/See you later We are still practicing our skills at lining up, so we skipped the goodbye song.

Hand Stamps!

 And there it is. It turned out to be a very successful storytime with 58 attendees.

Why Do You Librarian?

 One of my mother's favorite stories is from when I was two or three, and she called to me from a different room, "Anna, what are you doing?" and I replied, "I just organizing, Mama." Some of my earliest memories are of sorting my crayons and toys. I guess you could say I've always been a fan of order and access.

A life-long library and bookmobile kid, I first became intrigued with working at a library while at the Menasha Public Library in Wisconsin (my home library--my grandparents were huge library supporters and served on the Library Board). I couldn't find the nonfiction title I was searching for in the adult section (I was obsessed with the Time Life books series, "Enchanted World") so I enlisted the help of a librarian, but she couldn't find it either. And that's when she said it, "I guess we'll have to have the library detectives look for it."

I was all, excuse me, did you say LIBRARY DETECTIVES?!

And then I never thought about it again, as you do when you're ten. 

When I started college, I parlayed my love of organization and attention to detail into a position at the college library. I worked in the serials department, and I loved it, but moved on to bigger and better things as college progressed (needing money is so pedestrian).

Eventually, trying to find direction for my life, I decided to go back to libraries. I enrolled in library school and got a position working in a special library. Based of my love of and demonstrated talent for organizing people and procedures, I was headed down a library management track until I rediscovered my first love: children's and YA literature.

And here I am! How did you come to libraries as a profession?

WLA 2013

October has been a whirlwind of presenting and traveling. It was great, but I'm excited for life to settle back down. This past week, I was in in Green Bay for the Wisconsin Library Association Youth Services Pre-conference and Annual Conference. Those Wisconsin librarians know how to do a conference right!

I had a great time presenting, "Engaging Early Literacy Storytimes: Props, Puppets, Flannels and More" at the pre-conference. The main problem I encountered was that I didn't bring enough handouts! If you missed a handout, or just want a taste of what I did, you can find it here.

I also had the pleasure of co-presenting, "Making Social Media Work for YOU: with Sara from Bryce Don't Play. Our slide deck was more humorous than helpful, being GIF-filled, but we also created a Google Site to help people get started building their own personal learning networks.

I also got to co-host WLA's first Guerrilla Storytime! It was loads of fun. Keep an eye on the Storytime Underground for the low-down on how it went!

Program Planning and the Perfectionist Personality

One of the things I have learned about myself and programming is that if I don't write it down, I stress about it. The longer I wait to write it down, the more I stress out. Listing it out makes me feel better about things in many ways--small steps, deadlines, breaking up tasks etc. So I've created a program planning method that is basically a glorified to-do list.

Did I need to hand-craft moldy cheese for my D.o.a.W.K party? No, but the kids were super impressed by its grossness and I enjoyed making it, cackling to myself all the while.

I try really hard to take an "Unprogramming" perspective and not spend more time planning than a program is worth, but it's a learned process for me (someone who would love to be a perfectionist party planner in another life). 

First, I write down all the ideas/possibilities for a program. The first draft is basically a research brainstorm. This part might start very incidentally; I get a program idea and write it down in my Vitalist calendar (or Outlook at my old job). Then I add notes anytime I find or think of something that I want to remember. So it might look like this in the early stages:

Wonder Book club 7/15/13

Notes:

Smash things--smash out bullying. Create first? Write?

Something with precepts, maybe.

So Tomorrow did book club for this--check post for ideas

This work is incidental--by the time I get to crunch time (about a week before I actually do the program), I've only spent 5-10 minutes on it so far. Full disclosure, at this point I'm also starting to feel like this about the program.

Then, I take a half-hour or so and make myself a program outline.  I write down all the things I *want* to do for the program, and below that I write down all things I need for each activity--purchased, gathered, or created. Then I take a realistic look at what's feasible, what's too much effort, what's just blatantly over-doing it, and decide what my program will actually look like. For me, it's totally crucial to see the whole thing laid out in black and white, so to speak.

On the day of the program, I can just consult my list to gather all my materials and set everything up, and I'm good to go.

I think I've hit a nice balance between my perfectionism/desire to create the BEST.PROGRAM.EVER and keeping myself sane and being a good steward of my own time.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Party:

 

Spy Program:

Overthinking It

I'm so thankful for other bloggers who inspire me to complete and actually share things I've been sitting on forever. Sometimes I get very frustrated with myself for being such a slow processor. I get an idea and I need to think about it and just let it be for a long while before I put it into words. Mostly I am learning to appreciate that about myself, but it's hard sometimes when I see people who are so talented at just getting things done quickly and efficiently.

I recently attended my first ALA, and it was amazing. I was able to have some great conversations with Melissa and Kendra about being a slow-processor, and I also sharpened some of my thinking about my approach to programming through Marge and Amy's session on Unprogramming.

One of the pivotal slides from Marge and Amy's Unprogramming session

I have DEFINITELY struggled with over-planning programs, and I have a few posts I've been sitting on that I feel like I can finish now (yay!). I love when I read a blog post, connect with colleagues, or attend a session that sharpens and focuses the amorphous blob of thoughts I've been sitting on forever. It feels like magic. 

Show Me the Awesome--Diversity in Collection Development

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com.

As part of the fantastic "30 Days of Self Promotion" blog tour going on this month (full archive), I'm going to write about something very near and dear to my heart: Diversity in Collection Development.

Why Does it Matter?

I don't care how homogeneous, remote, or just plain 'white' your community is--you should be thinking about diversity in your collections, AND in the books you present during storytime. One of the biggest parts of our mission as librarians is to provide access. Access to technology, to ideas, to education and, more broadly, access to the amazing world we live in. We provide windows into other lives, other ways of living. And we also have a responsibility to show kids how much the same life is--how much we all have in common. It's our responsibility to reflect the diverse world back to our library users.

Diversity in collection development is so much more than just books about Civil Rights, or "What it's like to live in X country." Those books are very very important. But if the only picture books we have that feature people of color are history books, historical fiction, or books about other countries we are doing a huge disservice to the people we serve. We're also contributing to the concept of 'otherness' that so many people of color live with every day. I want everyone to feel that they belong in my library. If we are building diverse collections, we need to seek out fantastic books that feature people of color and that aren't about race We need bedtime books, first day of school books, friendship books, loose tooth books and scared of the dark books that feature people of color. Those are the books that I work very hard to find and feature at my library.

It's not for me to speak about discrimination or prejudice, or to try and tell stories that don't belong to me. But what I can do is listen to those in the know, and support and promote authors of color,  and use my purchasing power to encourage publishers to embrace diversity as well. I want to be a diversity ally, and I am challenging you to be the same.

What do I actually do?

• Read blogs that focus on diversity. A lot. Challenge my viewpoints as much as possible. Learn. Grow. This is the main thing. I do everything I can to make sure that I'm aware of what's out there, and then make a point to seek out those books.
• When I'm looking through book catalogs and review publications I am always looking for books that can add diversity through my collection. I challenge myself to stop thinking, "That won't circulate here" or making assumptions about my users. I have an eagle eye watching for books about universal themes that feature people of color.
• One easy way I keep tabs on my collections is to watch my 'new books' displays--are they reflective of a diverse world? How many of the total number on display are diverse? Who would feel welcome looking at this display? (Example below)
• Watch my orders, and pay attention to book covers. I try to click through my book orders before I finish them and look at covers to get an overview of the overall diversity of each order.

Some things I read to learn:

theMicroAggressionProject 
American Indians in Children's Literature
CBC Diversity 
I'm Here, I'm Queer, Now What the Hell do I Read?
De Colores: La Raza Experience in Books for Children
Es Divertido Hablar Dos Idiomas!
Reading in Color
PaperTigers Blog
Diversity in YA

Awards and Lists:

Stonewall Award
Pura Belpre Award
Schneider FamilyAward
Coretta Scott King Award
South Asia Book Award
Rainbow Book List 

 What am I missing? I'm always looking for more!

On a random morning I took stock of my picture book display and found 8/14 titles on display were either 1. A true story about a person of color 2. Featured a person of color on the cover regardless of the story or 3. portrayed a folk or fairy tale from a non-European culture. Most of the time I don't take a photo, just count how many books on the display are diverse, then count how many books are on display total. I aim for about 50% and am pleased to report that that is an easy benchmark to hit when you pay attention to diversity!

Now We are Eight

My husband and I have a very strict gift tradition for the eighth birthday of our nieces and nephews. We fill a mailing tube with candy and a few trinkets--but mostly candy--decorate it and mail it out.

An.Entire.Mailing.Tube...Full.of.candy.

Take a moment and consider the impact that would have made on you at age eight. Something like this or this. And for those of you who relate better to cats than humans: this

When my husband and I were first getting to know each other, I started to notice that a suspicious amount of his childhood stories started with, "When I was eight..." This quickly became an inside joke for us--man, a lot sure happened when you were eight! How old were you when that happened? Eight? Eight was a big year!

I have a memory from my childhood about being eight that stands out very clearly in my mind though I wasn't eight when it happened. While walking with my cousin Katie, my cousin Shawn rode past on his bike and did that thing where he slammed on the brakes and kind of slid around so that by the time he stopped he had swung around to face us. I was SO IMPRESSED by his mad bike-riding skillz. I asked Katie how old he was and she said he was eight. Eight! I was in awe of eight. I couldn't WAIT to be that big and be able to do all the things an eight year old can do. Why did that moment have such an impact on me? I have no idea, but since Shawn is almost four years older than me, it is one of my earliest memories.

I have so many indelible childhood memories like that, though most of them I can't put a date to so precisely. I love hearing other people's stories from childhood, and sorting through those moments that manage to stand out amid the hazy blur of memories we carry into adulthood.

One of the things I love about my job is that I can often see that I'm part of making those standout moments in kids' lives. We forget so so so much of what happens to us when we're young. Our childhood memories are strange and random and unpredictable. But as a children's librarian I feel like I get to occupy a special place in the lives of my storytimers. I'm outside their daily life; I don't scold or punish or make them eat their peas. I'm silly and fun and every memory we make together is full of joy. Reading, singing, playing. I see it in their eyes when they see me outside of storytime, I hear it in the stories parents tell me about their children "playing storytime" at home. And I have no doubt that we're making memories that will stick.  Someday when they are adults they'll talk about that one time at the library--probably when they were eight.

What Flannel Friday Means to Me

For the two year anniversary of Flannel Friday, Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce is doing a special roundup of posts where community members reflect on how FF has impacted them.

Adorable graphic Sharon designed

For me, Flannel Friday was the beginning of creating a personal learning network (PLN) that has dramatically changed my career for the better. When FF started I was alone at a rural library with a too-big job and no network whatsoever. It was sad. And lonely.  Through Flannel Friday I got onto Twitter--FF gave me an entry point, people to follow, and reason to be on Twitter. Now I have a worldwide network of amazing librarian colleagues, many of whom have become real life friends, and that has led me into participating in librarianship on a wider scale by giving me the resources, awareness, and connections needed to get involved with presenting and committee work.

I love the idea sharing that takes place on FF. My first post included no flannel; it was a prop story. I continue to advocate for FF as a community for idea sharing rather than one specific format. It's so much more than just flannel board stories!

To me, Flannel Friday means community.

Sing Sing Sing!

Hi Miss Julie posted a great piece on singing in storytime today, and it's motivated me to finally, FINALLY write down my experience with singing in storytime. I've been thinking about and planning this post for, oh let's see...wow. Over a year ago. 

Stage Fright

I don't use recorded music in storytime, except when we've had a storytime that was specifically ABOUTexploring music. Because I believe there is lots of great recorded music out there, I play music before and after storytime. I rotate the CD each month. This helps me learn new songs, highlights our music collections, and sets the stage for storytime really well.

There are two main reasons I don't use recorded music DURING storytime. First, my personal storytime philosophy emphasizes modeling behavior to parents and caregivers. I want them to have NO REASON not to sing at home, and I don't want them to feel like they need a certain CD to sing at home. Second, I can't sing along with recorded music.

If you had told my 10 years ago that I would regularly and happily sing in front of people I would have literally started to cry. For years, I listed wanting to be musical as the one thing I would change about myself if I could. I couldn't even hum a few bars of a song in front of a friend without tearing up with embarrassment and wanting to hide under the bed.

I did, however, always love camp songs but could never figure out why I could happily sing those songs but nothing else. Despite a few years of piano lessons and band, I don't understand music. I don't know how to change the key, and if someone is singing differently than I am able to (pitch? key?), I don't know how to adjust. In fact right now I have a mom/nanny who sits right in front during storytime and she sings really well...and it's totally throwing me off the same way recorded music does.

I had a HUGE revelation when I realized that I wasn't a soprano. I know, that sounds dumb, but so much singing is soprano and I always tried to emulate that. Once I had that revelation I was able to understand why I could sing songs I knew very well, but nothing else. I have to know a song really well in order to be able to sing it within my range. When I'm in my range I have a fairly nice, serviceable voice--and I love singing in storytime!

I can't read music, so to learn new songs I listen to them over and over until they're in my head. Then, I sing them over and over--usually in the car--until they are second nature to me.

Now singing is one of my favorite parts about storytime, even though it doesn't come easily to me. I'm never afraid to sing with children, no matter where I am. There's such joy in holding a friend's baby and bouncing out a little tune. So much of the feedback I get from parents and caregivers is about favorite storytime songs. Just sing, you won't regret it!

Library Love--Get Outside your Bubble

My favorite Valentine was a letter from a Storytimer at my old library

I am feeling the library love today! It's so wonderful to visit other libraries and get ideas, insight and just experience something different. I highly recommend making the effort to get out of your bubble and visiting libraries outside your system.

Yesterday I took a trip to visit Marge (Tiny Tips for Library Fun) and Sara (Bryce Don't Play)* at their library a few hours away. It was awesome to get a behind-the-scenes look at all the cool things they're doing at their library. It's always so refreshing to talk to Marge--five minutes talking to her can literally change my whole outlook on something.

Sara and I are presenting together this April with Anne (So Tomorrow), so part of the purpose of my trip was to get some work done on our presentation,** but I also got to sit in on one of Sara's fantastic Elementary-age programs (I warned her I would be creepin' on her, so it wasn't like this***).

I totally admire Sara's talent for school-aged programming, and she's planning to blog about the program I attended, "Wild Record Wednesdays." It was another great, simple program idea that WORKS. But more than the program idea, I really appreciated the ability to see how she runs her programs. From when to call a no-show (which it looked like at first), to dealing with non-ideal behavior, to seeing her style of interacting with the kids and conducting the program, it made me feel really invigorated to actually *see* someone else doing what I do and how she does it.

Today I stopped by the library closest to my house, which is in a different system from the library where I work. I just spent about ten minutes strolling around and looking at how they do things. What kinds of displays do they have? How are they communicating with their patrons? What kinds of programs are they doing? In this case it was really interesting because I could see different ways this library was implementing the same programs that my library does since we're in the same consortium.

It's definitely worth the effort to get out and see and celebrate what others are doing.

Superfluous cute story:

My favorite moment was walking past an early literacy installation, which happened to be a bus complete with a steering wheel, the little girl 'driving' the bus invited me to, "Hop in!" Being a good children's librarian, I naturally complied. When I asked where we were going she said, "To college." There was an interactive magnetic map inside the bus, and a little boy came up and started arranging our route. He informed me very seriously that if we were good at the bank, hospital, church, and post office THEN we could go to the park. You're never off the clock if you work with kids!

*pro-tip: her blog title is a lie--she's totally fun

**After Anne read the work we did on the outline she tweeted this gem: "When you plan a conference presentation with @opinionsbyanna and @PLSanders, the outline specifies where GIFs will go. #themoreyouknow

***or was it?

Choosing Books for Storytime

Creative Commons photo by Ozyman

I love love love reading other people's posts on how they put storytime together. In the spirit of fairness, I thought I'd share my process.

I use themes in storytime, but I don't start by choosing a theme. I'm sort of ridiculously picky about books I'll use in storytime. If I'm not feeling it, I just can't fake it--and that goes for some classics that just don't resonate for me.* I got burned a few times early on in my career by picking a theme first and trying to fit books to match it, but doing that made me miserable, so I came up with my own method.

I read all the picture books I can get my hands on. When I find books I like, I think about what themes they would fit well, and brainstorm if there are any other awesome ST books I could team them with.

Once I have an idea, I start a ST outline for that theme/idea. I do this digitally. I have a Storytime folder, and in that folder there are folders for finished storytimes and one for work-in-progress storytimes. Sometimes a theme/idea will sit in the work-in-progress folder for months and months before I find enough books to create a whole storytime. Often, once I have a book or idea, I will order a bunch of options using the library catalog, and fast-forward the process. Sometimes I don't find enough books I like and I scrap that idea or theme (Camping ST, I'm looking at you). Once in a while I'll do a no-theme storytime to catch all the orphan books I've wanted to read in ST, but couldn't build a whole program around.

What do I look for in a storytime book choice?

1. Do I like it? 
2. Will it suit my audience? As much as I L-O-V-E books with off-the-wall humor or abrupt jokey endings, many of those books are more suited to class visits than my particular storytime crowd. I look at length, storyline, and amount of dialogue as key factors here.
3. Can I make it interactive? Is there room in the story to add sounds or actions? This is a big factor in adjusting a book to work with a wide age range. I can read a longer, more complicated book in family storytime if I can make it interactive for both the older kids AND the younger kids.
4. If it won't work 'as is' but I really like it, what can I do to make it work (and is it worth the time)? Here's where I look to see if the book is too long (if it's repetitive, maybe I can cut out a few verses) or if the pictures are too small (can I project it? Flannelize it? Puppetize it?).

For any given storytime I will identify at least six books that would work with my group. I make sure I have a variety of lengths and storylines.  It's amazing how many good books I will find on a theme, but they all tell the same basic story. Unfortunately that makes for a boring storytime, so I have to make some tough decisions, sometimes!

Once I have my books chosen it's time to write a storytime outline.

To be continued...


*for example, I know lots of people love "Brown Bear Brown Bear" and all its iterations, but that one just doesn't work for me. On the other hand, "When Sophie Gets Angry, Really Really Angry" by Molly Bang is like magic for me; every time I've read that book to a group of kids you could hear a pin drop--but I know some other storytime bloggers just don't connect with that one. It's so personal!

Learning to Let Go

Book Bin from The Library Store, Inc.

I'm not out to convert anybody, but to share the story of my conversion.

Let's talk about bins. Specifically bins for picture books. The kind where the books are all standing forward with the covers facing out.

I hated them.

When I started my new job I was really annoyed to find that all the libraries in the system used them. "How do you find things for the pull list?" "They aren't in order! How do you keep them in order?!" I thought it was such a disservice to users; not having things in order or easy to find. I was seriously disgruntled that I would have to deal with picture book bins. It went against every fiber of my organized librarian being.

At my old job I supervised both the library clerks and library pages. They all hated the picture books. They hated shelving them, and they REALLY hated shelf-reading them. But they needed to be shelf-read all.the.time so I was constantly dealing with push-back on picture book maintenance.  If only those darn kids would just keep their little hands off the books so they'd stay in order.

Here's what I've learned/seen with bins:

• With bins, every single bin is a display. And the best part? They are self-filling displays! If the front book gets chosen the next book proudly stands forth. No glaring empty spot in sight. There are also bins with cool little display platforms.

• Not every collection benefits from strict alphabetical order. The majority of use picture books receive is from browsers. Making the collection easier to browse is better service. Yes, it might be slightly more inconvenient to a student or someone looking for specific books...but I spent a lot of time helping people find specific books that were supposedly in order with traditional shelving too. Managed chaos is the nature of the kids area. I'm embracing it.

• Apparently (before my time) every single library in my system increased circ on picture books after bins were installed. Kids and families love them, and increased circ is something I can definitely get behind.

• Not only are they perfect kid height, and high in kid appeal, I can find things faster too. It's much quicker and more accurate for me personally to flip through covers (while standing) than to read call numbers (while kneeling on the floor). I rarely miss the book I'm looking for this way, which I would often do when scanning call numbers. The covers and art are generally much more recognizable to me. With bins, I give faster, better, more accurate service to patrons when helping them find books.

• The department stays much tidier with bins. No more facing shelves and making sure all the spines line up. No more tipped bookends. 

• I seriously wish I could go back in time and change my old library over to bins; it would have been a great fit at that little library.  Page and clerk staff at my new library also prefer the bins, so they're happier too.

Here are some other libraries using bins:

Brown Public Library, Northfield, VT
Arlington Heights Memorial Library, IL
North Community Library, LaCrosse, WI

All that being said? The DVDs are only in order as far as the first letter, and then it's a free-for-all. Drives.me.CRAZY.

SLP Outreach/Confessions of a School Visitor pt. 3

I've expressed my frustration with SLP school visits before--they stress me out BIG TIME, take a huge toll on my workload, and my data shows that they don't have much effect in terms of SLP sign-up.

Despite my well-laid plans for this year, I ended up making the decision not to do SLP visits to the schools this year. The reasons were many, and I had an awesome discussion about it over Twitter with several other librarians, which led Marge Loch-Wouters (who I'm delighted to call one of my stealth mentors) to write about SLP visits over on her blog, Tiny Tips for Library Fun

Sara, at Bryce Don't Play, also hit on some of the issues I've had with presenting SLP as well--I've definitely been struggling with 'The Way SLP Visits Have Always Been Done' ie: costumes and puppets. (I LOVE costumes and I LOVE doing puppets with the kids--but that just doesn't fly or seem authentic when you're trying to convince the fifth graders that the program isn't just for the first graders).

(I need to learn from Marge how to not write a book with each blog post...sigh).

Last summer I did collect data on what schools had the most participation so I could compare that with my school visits. And, as I suspected, there's little or no correlation. Regardless of whether I visited, the biggest factors were location (nearness to library) and the school's own library situation. Unsurprisingly, schools that had dedicated library staff had kids who were more likely to participate in the program. Readers gonna read.

In my geographically spread out library population, I've often considered that it doesn't matter how excited I get the kids about the program, if they can't get to the library they can't participate. It's the parents I have to find.

So with that in mind, when I was invited to participate in the City's Healthy Way Walk (booths and giveaways along the new trail around the lake to encourage families to get out and walk), I said "YES!"

I had FORTY FIVE kids sign up, fifteen of which were teens. MANY of whom said they'd never doen the program before. Let me put that into perspective for you: last year I had a total of 275 kids, 42 of which were teens (yes, small numbers overall, but steadily growing each year I've been doing this).

Onward!

Teen Success Part 3: Where We're At Now

Part 1
Part 2

So, here we are. Since I started at my library, every year I offered a lock-in during National Library Week, and last summer I decided to do another one at the end of summer. Despite my bad luck with Teen Thursdays, I was super excited about the summer lock-in since I had planned to play Life-Sized Clue with the kids.

This didn't really work for two reasons:

1. it doesn't get dark until at least nine in August, so our Clue time was at the end when the kids were all jacked up on soda and candy, and we were short on time (lock-in ended at 10 or 10:30, don't recall exactly--but we were crunched for time).
2. Dynamics again. I had a few kids who were there to actually do what I had planned and follow directions. And I had a bunch of kids who were there to go crazy.

So, when National Library Week rolled around this year, I decided to do things differently. I realized that my dynamic problems were partly my own fault. I was trying to do too much just to entice kids--any kids!-- to come to my programs.

Lock-In! Computers! Pizza! Soda! Snacks! Crafts! Life-Sized Clue! Games! And MORE!!!!!!!!

(seems a tad desperate, no?)

Essentially I was telling them it was a free-for-all and then being frustrated when they showed up expecting that. I decided that this year, although I would be doing it after-hours and it would essentially still BE a lock-in, I wasn't going to advertise it as a lock-in. I still wanted to play Life-Sized Clue, so that's how I advertised it.

You guys? I set the registration deadline to Thursday, and it was FULL by the end of Thursday! That's so epic for my library I can't even express it. I had 24 spots, and I could have had at least 30. AND THEY ALL SHOWED UP.

It.was.so.much.fun.

We went right into playing Clue. I had two staff helping, so we were able to 'host' three of the games, and the fourth group knew how to play. We played for about an hour and fifteen minutes, then took a snack break in the meeting room. At that point, rather than go back to Clue, we played large group circle games like Fruit Basket Upset and Secret Leader (these types of games are my specialty)

They were awesome. Everyone there wanted to be there, and wanted to do the activities I had planned.

Here's what I've learned:

• There is little or no interest in weekday teen programming in my community. The need is for weekend/Friday night things to do. I'll admit that I've been avoiding that truth, but for a group like I had for Clue? I'll gladly work on Friday nights (well, some Friday nights). 
• Don't overdo it. It doesn't have to be everything to everyone. Manage expectations on both ends by being clear in your advertising what will happen at the event.
• I think I've finally figured out the right way to market to my kids (school announcements, forget the flyers). During the school year anyway--BUT I have contact info for all the kids who came during the school year, so I should be able to contact them directly over the summer.

Going forward:

Friday night events once or twice per month over the summer.

A planned redecorating of the existing YA area of the library--hoping to build ownership of the area with teens. 

Stay tuned to see if I'm on to something here!

Teen Programming Part 2

Read Part One

I've been trying to get teen programming off the ground for three years now, and I'm hoping that I'm finally reaching success. Let's talk about it, shall we?

Library Background, three years ago:
No teen program. We have a teen space, but the library as a whole is not teen friendly. There is a 'comfy chair' seating area in a bank of windows, but there's a tendency to see that as 'adult seating' and teens who sit there are eyed warily and frowned upon. Before my time there was a futon couch in the teen area, which led to lots of making-out problems. So that was removed and a study table was put in--unfortunately being near some of the only outlets in the library, this table is monopolized by adult laptop users. We also have this awful set-up where the library has two entrances to a giant hallway that is isolated from the rest of the library. The local Boys and Girls club was a block away, and kids coming from there would head to the library if they had no where else to go. These kids had little or no interest in using the library, just needed a place to hang out and continue being unruly. Teens tended to congregate in the entrances and hallway and there were problems with noise, swearing, and blocking entrances.

What I tried first: 2009
Building relationships with the teens who were coming to the library. I would go talk to them, say hi, learn their names etc. Whenever there was a discipline issue, I tried to get other staff to let me handle it and I would use a relational approach to deal with it. "Hey, you know you guys can't use that kind of language if you want to hang out here. I have no problem with you being here, it's your library too, but you need to follow the basic rules and make sure that you're not disrupting other people." That type of thing.

How it went:
It worked.  And it didn't. I built great relationships with many of the 'trouble-makers.' They would come seek me out in my office (part of the library they'd never venture into otherwise). I got random hugs. They listened to me--or at least tried--and respected the rules. But all my teen events were flops, except the lock-in. I would tell them about my events, they would sound excited and promise to come...and they wouldn't. The lock-in was the only event that would attract a large enough group to justify the planning, but the dynamics were terrible. I'd have some quiet, shy, and respectful kids I didn't know well, some of my 'trouble-makers,' and some of my trouble-makers' friends who were loud, crazy, and not at all interested in whatever it was I had planned. I'd plan activities and games that would just devolve into chaos. That dynamic was like oil and water, and nothing really worked. It drove everyone away.

Winter '09/'10: 
More events like I had during summer. More flops. I had my second lock-in. As with the first it was a success attendance-wise, but didn't lead to any other success.

Summer '10:
I had a bunch of random teen events throughout the summer. I made myself a public facebook account and tried using that to advertise/reach the teens in the community. I was constantly using great ideas from successful teen programs--Minute-to-Win-It, spa days, Wii games, art programs etc. All were flops.

Winter '10/'11:
Didn't really do much during the school year. In August 2010 the library went through a reorganization, and it was incredibly chaotic. How the library worked was restructured, two full-time positions were lost and five part-time front-desk staff were hired.

Summer '11: "One World Many Stories"
I came up with a PLAN. Since all these big fancy one-off type programs weren't working, I would offer consistent weekly teen programming on a variety of topics to try and start building a solid group of teens who would prioritize coming to my events. I would then continue "Teen Thursdays" into the school year and taste sweet sweet success. The events would be smaller/require less work from me, but they would always have treats and would happen consistently. I gave it the old college try, but, yeah--flop. I think the highest attendance at any Teen Thursday was eight, maybe? And I had no consistent attendees.

Winter '11/'12: 
I pretty much gave up. I stopped my feeble attempts at Teen Thursday around the end of November, and  decided to focus on tweens. I had a super successful Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 6 party (like, whoa, 100 people were there). I was ecstatic! We were playing large group circle games, I was in heaven! I asked them if they'd like it if I had more game events to play games like we were doing right then and they said YES! Two weeks later I had a game event--same day of the week, same time, same advertising format. Two kids showed up. I scratched my planned twice-a-month tween events off the calendar in frustration. I wanted to give up on all kids older than six.

Since this is so long, I'm going to stop here. Look for "Part 3: Where We're at Now" coming soon.

Sweet Success-Teen Program Style. Part 1

Youth Services: Programming for one age group, Collection Development, Working only 40 hours per week

After three years, I may have just had my first entirely successful teen program. No spin, no excuses, just 100% success. It feels really nice. Not sure if it's a trend, or something I can replicate but I'm sure going to try.

I've been part of ground-up successful teen programming before. I did an internship with a branch of a large suburban MN library while I was in library school. A classmate of mine (she worked there) and I created teen programming there for the first time, and it was very successful. We were reaching teen library users. They were regularly coming to library events and bringing new people to the library. We developed relationships with our population and turned a possibly disruptive element into library advocates.  Soon after, the system hired a dedicated Teen Librarian and it has been interesting to watch the progression and success of teen programming in that system.

My current position serves ages 0-18, and frankly, I think that's a nigh-impossible task. My personal belief is that truly successful teen programming requires--REQUIRES--a dedicated, location-specific, teen liaison.

What is successful teen programming?  I consider successful teen programming to be that which reaches a consistent, dedicated group of teens--especially those who are already library-users, and turns them into library advocates.  It is not just one-off events that attract a bunch of kids who will never set foot in the library until the next big sexy event you throw (not that those events are wrong, but I don't consider a series of one-offs to be successful teen programming--you follow?).  If you only consider attendance you may have the appearance of successful teen programming, but I bet for every 'successful' event there are at least as many flops/no-show events. I think this is why bigger libraries often seem to have more successful teen programs--a larger pool of teens to draw from means more attendance. But is it really successful teen programming?

Teens are so relational, you really need a LOT of time to build those relationships. Those of us in smaller libraries who wear many hats struggle to find that time.  It's not impossible to do, but I think administrators and the public need more appreciation for the time and dedication needed for teen programming in general.

In part 2 I'll talk more specifically about last week's program and what's working/what hasn't worked here.

Philosophizing

Have I whined mentioned my commute before? I live 42 miles from work. Yeah, that's an oil change per month. On the plus side, lots of time to listen to audiobooks! And I just got a new stereo in my car with an iPod hookup, so Playaways are now available to me, too.  Yay!

The point of me mentioning this is to say: I also spend a lot of my commute blogging...in my head. If only there were a legal/non-life endangering way to drive and blog at the same time, I'd be all over that.  Oh the wonderful posts I've written for you...in my head.

This is one of them.*

I've been thinking a lot lately about philosophies. Why do I certain things, why do I do them the way that I do, etc. I think it's important to be able to answer those questions--especially in institutions like libraries where there is such a long and ordered history. There are few things that make me cringe more than the phrase, "Because that's the way we've always done it."

That should never be the answer to anything. Seriously. If that's the only way you know to justify a process, it's time to step back and evaluate. I'd say re-evaluate, but chances are that there was never an initial evaluation. Libraries are notorious for this; going on Full-Steam Ahead! and rarely stopping to see if circumstances have changed or if there's a better way. Let's stop that, shall we?

I like to look at how things work in terms of systems, and think of more efficient processes and policies. I've likely annoyed many status quo-loving coworkers over the years but, alas, it is my nature to organize, systematise, and update. I can honestly say that in every job I've had, I've left the place running more efficiently than when I started. It's a good feeling.

In terms of what I'm doing now, I plan to write a series of philosophizing posts to cover the following topics:
My philosophy of teen services
My storytime philosophy
My art/craft philosophy
My music philosophy

I'm outlining my plans here in an attempt to be a bit more organized about posting, and get more of these posts out of my head and onto the blog where you can read them.

*The way I wrote this makes me think of the grammatically awkward opening to the show Hoarders, "This is one of their stories..." I thought about making that more intentional and playing up the joke, but my sense of humor is strange and I wasn't sure if anyone would even get it. So I decided to make an awkward footnote type thingy** down here so as not to distract from the serious nature of my blog-itizing.

**There must be a real name for the act of using an asterisk to make a post-script. If only there were some kind of research expert around to figure it out.