Are you sure you like teens?

7380407602_38e9a772fe_z

The following is the text of the LibChat (aka, library TEDTalk) that I gave at the 2016 Ohio Library Council Annual Convention and Expo. 

A microphone! They don’t usually let me have one of these. When I was in college, a work friend saw me pass outside the Wendy’s on High St and said to his friend, “That’s the loudest girl I know. She’s going to be a librarian.”

Of course, what he didn’t know and what I didn’t know is that I was going to be a teen librarian. The ability to be loud is pretty important in my line of work. I can be a pretty loud person, both vocally and personality-wise, but what most people don’t know is that I’m really quite an introvert, which is also helpful. While plenty of teens are rowdy, noisy, and excitable, an awful lot of my nerds are quiet and awkward – they need someone who can come down to their level when they need it.

And that’s what being a teen librarian is all about – doing what TEENS need. Absolutely everything is about them. And if you don’t like TEENS, you shouldn’t work with them.

When most people think about teen services, they immediately think of teen fiction, which, don’t get me wrong, is having an amazing moment. But my focus has to be on what THEY want to read, not what *I* like. I mean, my favorite book, teen fiction or otherwise, is Christina Meldrum’s MADAPPLE. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story about a girl raised in isolation, filled with beautiful imagery about nutritional plants and virgin births in various religions throughout history, and just a dash of incest.

That’s sounds like an easy sell to an eighth-grader, right?

So while I have an interesting answer for every teen reader who asks me, ‘Hey Sarah, what’s your favorite book?” for the majority of my patrons, I need to have an understanding of what THEY want.

A few years ago, I kept seeing THE GIVER on lists of books to give to readers of THE HUNGER GAMES, and I don’t think that’s accurate. Hunger Games is a masterful work of storytelling that compels you to keep reading because every single chapter ends in a cliffhanger.

And while THE GIVER is an absolute masterpiece that every single person on this planet should read, it’s not the book to give to a kid who just sped through the non-stop action-adventure of THE HUNGER GAMES. They need another action-packed thriller to keep them reading, even if it’s not of the same caliber.

Because that’s how you create a reader.

I mean, everyone loves John Green. But once they’ve burned through his four and three-quarters books, I have to know what else to give them. And that’s where knowing teen culture comes along. And let’s face it – we have a problem in the library world, where we still put books first. We’re the gatekeepers of knowledge and culture. Those things exist in a variety of mediums, and always have.

I’m going to list a bunch of things. When you know what I’m talking about, I want you to raise your hand.

  • Michelle Phan
  • Good Mythical Morning
  • Gunnarolla
  • Hannah Hart
  • Rosana Pansino
  • Dan & Phil
  • Rooster Teeth
  • JackSepticEye
  • Zoella
  • Tyler Oakley
  • Markiplier
  • Pewdiepie
  • The Vlogbrothers… otherwise known as John & Hank Green… creators of free educational content being used in classrooms around the world…

If you didn’t raise your hand, congratulations. You’re out of touch with an entire generation.

That collection of people are Youtubers (and some of the biggest names at that). They are the movers and shakers of our culture for ages 30 and below. They are making movies, writing books, creating shows, and shaking the very foundations of traditional media. They’re connecting with their fans, raising money for charity, and creating genuine communities online. Millions of people around the world are tuning in to watch them each day.

Pewdiepie, the biggest Youtuber as of this moment, has 40 million subscribers. Network television would KILL for those sorts of numbers!

That’s one of the reasons why everything is being rebooted. Traditional media is desperate to reach this generation, so they’re going back to what they know worked before. I’m… not convinced it’s working, although most of my teens who saw it enjoyed the new Ghostbusters.

When I first became a teen librarian in 2007, I would frequently pair books with tv shows and movies for quick book recommendations. Now, I simply ask what they watch, and the answer is almost always ‘YouTube.’

Knowing what they like is a big part of the puzzle that helps you create programming and build collections. But it’s also a great way to prove to them that you care about what they care about. Teens are just beginning to discover what THEY like, and we as librarians have the power to legitimize those interests by simply having a bit of knowledge.

I had a young teen come in asking for THIS BOOK LOVES YOU and I immediately said, “Oh, the new book by Pewdiepie?” You should have seen his face when he found an ADULT who knew what he was talking about. It’s even better that I can continue the conversation by saying, ‘Pewdiepie is fine, but I personally prefer Markiplier and the Game Grumps.”

Asking if they saw the newest episode of Supernatural when you spot the Winchester tattoo doodled on their notebook means that you can have a conversation and create a connection. That in turn makes it a whole lot easier to demand good behavior – because they know you’re on their side.

Recognizing the red shirt with the yellow star from STEVEN UNIVERSE means that I know it exists. It’s a cartoon with lots of queer-friendly content, and that goes a long way to reaching a teen who possibly feels alone everywhere else.

You don’t have to be an expert on these things, but you do have to stop at Hot Topic and see which fandoms are in right now. Which music videos are they listening to while they check their Facebook? Which shows are on the CW, MTV, Cartoon Network, and FreeForm? All these things go a long, long way to connecting with an audience that is notoriously hard to reach.

Because again, the biggest part of the job is the teens themselves.

I often like to tell people that my job is a mix of bookstore manager, pop culture guru, party planner, and social worker/therapist. I’m somewhere between teacher and cool much-older stepsister.

Teens need someone like that in their lives. Most kids have that person: a youth pastor, soccer coach, drama club advisor. But for the kids who aren’t involved in those sorts of activities, I’m their person.

I’m often among the first they come out to; someone who they can trust to use the name and pronoun they prefer without question or judgement.

They come to me with questions about STDs. I know which of them are sexually active (and yes, I remind them to use protection).

They respond to ‘What’s going on?’ With a plea for advice on what to do now that his girlfriend is pregnant. He’s excited to be the father he never had, but she’s thinking about terminating the pregnancy, and he’s panicking about it. What would you say to him?

I know who has learned to ‘play the game,’ becoming a different person depending on the group they’re in so they can better navigate the moods at home.

I watch them return home when the college financial aid dance becomes too complicated and life on campus alone gets too scary without the support system so many people take for granted. Home might not be great, but at least it’s familiar.

I know which of them suffer from emotional abuse and avoid being at home as much as possible, often skipping meals to do so and walking long miles to get to the safety of Teen Central.

I suspect who’s being physically abused, based on the hoodies and jeans being worn during one of the hottest summers I can remember. I put the suicide hotline number in their hands after I notice what they were looking at online, asking no other questions.

They leave me notes that say things like ‘hey girlie miss you lol’ a few weeks before shooting their abusive father in the head at 2 in the morning while he slept. I hadn’t seen her in months.

There’s nothing that can prepare you for this part of the job, other than love for the kids. Yeah, being a teen librarian is filled with movie premiere parties, the latest social media app, the newest Five Nights at Freddy’s game and tons of nerdy, awesome laughter, but it is also a heartbreaking experience, one shared by all of your teen librarians.

And if you don’t like these noisy, smelly, emotional creatures, please, stay out of my profession. Thank you.

 

Frustration.

IMG_2446
A group of my teens, Spring 2015. I know so much about each of them.

Life as a teen librarian is a fascinating/frustrating experience.

I’m not your parent, although I often know more about your interests and who you really are better than your parents.

I’m not your teacher, though I know your reading habits and what other skills & strengths you have outside of test-taking.

I’m not your sibling, though I’m often the person you come to with questions about STDs and other difficult issues you couldn’t find on Google.

I’m not your best friend, though I’m often one of the first people you come out to.

I’m not your social worker, though I know which of you have water and electricity and heat and which of you don’t.

I’m not your therapist, though I help you find books and information you need when your guardian won’t take you to a therapist. I put the suicide hotline number in your hands after I notice what you were looking at online, asking no other questions.

I know which of you suffer from emotional abuse and avoid being at home as much as possible, often skipping meals to do so and walking long miles to get to the safety of Teen Central.

I know which of you have learned to ‘play the game,’ becoming a different person depending on the group you’re in so you can better navigate the moods at home.

I suspect which of you are physically abused based on the long sweatshirts & jeans being worn in our sweltering high-humidity, 90 degree Ohio summer days.

I stand on the sidelines, wanting to help you break out of the violence and poverty that has been your life, but unable to do so when the college financial aid dance becomes too complicated and life on campus alone without the support system so many people take for granted gets too scary. Home might not be great, but at least it’s familiar.

I help when and where I can. But too often, I know you so well but am not a big enough presence in your life to help before it’s too late. I hear things through the grapevine; so-and-so’s back from college, they’re pregnant, he got shot. Social workers, parents, teachers – they’re told things. People let them know when tragedy strikes. But no one thinks to tell the teen librarian – she hears about it on news, stalks people on Facebook who neglect their privacy settings, desperately seeks information online.

Lately, colleagues ask me about Pokemon Go, if the kids are excited about Suicide Squad, if they care about the new Harry Potter book. I give these answers, but what I really want to know is what I’m supposed to do with my memories of the smart, hilarious, and sassy girl who left me a note on my desk two weeks ago just to say ‘Hey girly miss you lol’ after I haven’t seen her in months who shot her father last week.

What can I do for a former teen who is so smart and  been through so much who got shot in a botched robbery attempt, losing a lung and nearly dying in the hospital to infection? I was a wreck that month, but thankfully, he pulled through. Now he’s finding it difficult to get back to school to finish his double-major of chemistry and physics, what with his new disability and the knowledge that his shooter was allowed to walk free due to no evidence outside of his word.

How do I respond to a nineteen-year-old that I’ve known since I started who is excited to be a father but is panicking that his girlfriend might want to terminate the pregnancy?

I don’t know what to do for a teen who summons up the courage to tell her mom that she suspects she’s suffering from anxiety and depression and wants help then gets told to just get over it after laughing in her face.

I want to know how to help these kids get through more than a semester of college without the support system that I had.

I want to be as big a part of their lives as the knowledge I have about them, but I don’t know how. I know so many of these kids, give them a safe place to grow and explore and figure out who they are, and yet, nine years after starting, I still don’t know what to do about this big stuff. It hasn’t become any easier.

My life as a teen librarian is filled with gaming, the latest book-to-movie adaptation, lots of noise and tons of nerdy, awesome laughter; I know that. And I know that that’s what most people think of when they hear the phrase ‘teen librarian’. But my life is also filled with so much frustration.

My heart hurts.

A Summer Reading Reboot

Teen SRP 2015 booklet - front cover

Can we just take a moment to reflect on the glory of the 2015 teen summer artwork? Oh, it was everything I’ve always dreamed of.

Anyways.

So every year previous, the summer reading program for teens was the ever-simple ‘fill out an entry form for each item you read’ sort of thing. Simple, I suppose, in that it doesn’t take a lot of work on (most) staff’s part, and it’s easy to explain. Annoying, however, in that counting how many entries were turned in from how many people was always an all-day, spread-out-throughout-the-room sort of day. So many piles! Not to mention the fact that I never really believed those teens who turned in more than twenty or so slips. In fact, to those teens, I want to say, if you weren’t just stuffing the box, please go outside and do something else! Watch some tv!

But perhaps that’s just me.

2015 become the year we finally Changed. We had wanted to turn our summer reading program into more of a summer ‘learning’ experience – which I am very much in favor of, since I think a teen needs to learn from many things, not just re-reading the 70-some issues of One Piece for the chance to win an iPad. Plus I think it’s far more fun to earn a prize rather than to try to win one.

The Teen Advisory Board was also on board, even though it meant the prizes had to be something small – there was no way each teen could get a t-shirt. This is what we talked about while creating our very first learning challenge:

  • There needed to be some sort of reading minimum – it didn’t seem fair to win everything just through the ‘experiences’, which I’ll talk about in a moment. They said that you should have earn at least two points in each box by reading – that way someone doesn’t just do a bunch of other stuff to start, and end up not reading anything.
  • Earning ‘points’ had to be reasonable, but still a challenge. They came up with 20, and you earned a prize after each five.
  • ‘Experiences’ needed to be varied – it didn’t seem fair to only reward those doing science experiments, when there’s plenty to learn from a nature hike or starting a Youtube channel. And they couldn’t all require money or transportation, as both are scarce in our community.
  • Some experiences could only be earned once (ie; you could only create one Youtube channel.)
  • Five manga should count as one book.
  • Prizes:
    • Five points: food coupon (Chipotle was by far the most popular)
    • Ten points: deck of playing cards
    • Fifteen points: drawstring backpack
    • Ten points: book and invitation to a special after-hours event

In the end, the TAB came up with or approved all the experiences, and the ‘reading experiences’ was completely their idea – after all, expanding your reading horizons is as important as anything else! The first time you completed a reading challenge, it was worth TWO points, meaning you could actually complete the entire learning challenge having read only four books (which was a big selling point to some of the more reluctant participants). That proved to be the hardest to explain to both staff and participants alike, but having someone walk away after registering asking ‘What’s a good audiobook to try?’ was fabulous.

The experiences:

  • Attend a library event
  • Attend a concert or play
  • Write/draw a graphic novel & enter our contest
  • Go on a nature hike
  • Visit a museum
  • Start a blog and create 5 entries of original content
  • Get a library card
  • Take a 5-10 mile bike ride
  • Write a book review and submit it to teencentral@wtcpl.org
  • Volunteer in your community
  • Conduct a science experiment
  • Visit a comic book shop
  • Watch a documentary
  • Create a Youtube channel and upload two original videos

Reading experiences:

  • Audiobook
  • Historical fiction
  • Poetry
  • Non-fiction
  • Graphic novel
  • Biography

In the end, we added a few experiences we hadn’t thought about: attending a festival, and watching ten episodes of subtitled anime (which we included as reading). Pictured at top is the cover of the summer  challenge booklet they received upon registering, while below is the inside and back cover.

Teen SRP 2015 booklet - left

Teen SRP 2015 booklet - right

Teen SRP 2015 booklet - back

All in all, it was a success. It was bit hard to determine what the participation would be, and therefore what prizes to purchase, but our numbers were up across the board, so I am happy! We’ll definitely be continuing it this year.

Pin the glasses on John Green!

So hey, remember last summer, when I made this hilarious thing for our TFIOS Nerdfighter gathering, posted it to our Teen Central tumblr, and then JOHN GREEN REBLOGGED IT, thereby making my life for basically ever?

‘Cause yeah, it totally happened.

Anyways! A lot of people have asked about it, and of COURSE you may all steal it! Anything I put on this blog is fair game. This is not just bragging about my events; this is definitely information sharing, and that’s why the thing over on the left says ‘steal my stuff!’

I’ve emailed the basic image that I found online to create this (I traced all the pieces parts onto poster board and glued him together), but because it was laminated, I didn’t think I could scan it. WELL I WAS WRONG! I tried today and it WORKED, so here! Have the original. You’ll want to print on card stock if you can and laminate him, and resize then cut out the glasses in their entirety to get the full effect before laminating, but here you go. Please feel free to manipulate him however you please. The PDF is a bit small (11×17), but will work if you need it. Have fun!

john green pin the glasses

glasses

Complete package in PDF.

Thursdays at Main: A different take on programming…

the guys

*crickets*

I do apologize for the silence around here, but it’s been an interesting year for me. In previous years, I’ve held one big event most months (say, 8/12), then had an anime & TAB meeting on two different Saturdays, and occasionally had a weekly hang-out or game night.

But back in spring of 2014, when we were already thinking about the fall (summer obviously already planned), I knew that I just could *not* deal with Smash Bros for two hours every week any longer. (BWAH BAH NAH NAAAAAAH! NAH NAH NAH NAH NAAAAH! I was starting to hear the theme in my sleep), so I decided that although we’d continue to have weekly events (they would be here anyways, now that I’d trained them to come each & every Thursday), we would do different stuff every week.

It… has made for an interesting year, and a very different approach to my programming than I’ve done previously. Why?

– My crew is mostly guys right now, and has been since the fall. I don’t really know why – the events I plan aren’t particularly gender-specific (we watched TFIOS with 15 guys and 3 girls). So while most other libraries tell me their teen events are populated by middle school girls, I now not only get primarily high schoolers, but guys as well. I don’t understand why – there’s no secret that I’m aware of.

– The guys, and even the girls who do come, do not want to do crafts. They’ll all make t-shirts and do coloring sheets, but not crafts. My craft closet is suspiciously full.

– I’ve had to seriously re-think how I spend money on programs. Whereas in the past I’ve spent a decent amount of money on that one big event and next-to-nothing for a weekly hangout (to be fair, I have a VERY generous budget [Thanks, Supportive Director & Board!], but I have to make sure I now have enough money to get food and the occasional craft and prize for the 10-40 teens who attend every week. I know, it’s a fabulous problem to have, but still. More teens = more food (and more cups/bowls – those things add up!), more supplies, and just more ‘stuff.’ My teens are hungry, and also bored, and Thursdays at Main is sometimes the only time they get to hang out together. They expect it to be fun, each and every week.

And you better believe they let me know when it isn’t.

Fascinatingly, besides (usually) remembering that the first Thursday is Game Night (for which we purchased a shiny new Wii U and Smash Bros, thanks for our Friends), they never have ANY IDEA WHAT THE EVENT IS. They take SO MANY flyers, but they just don’t know. Sometimes I have teens who come for that specific event, but the core group of 10-15? Nope. No idea. They just know that it’s Thursday, and so they’re here. Usually right after school – and we can’t get into the room (due to computer classes) until at least 4:30. So it’s noisy from about 3-4:30 down in Teen Central, then we finally take the noise upstairs to our meeting room until about 7:30. There are frequent trips to and from Teen Central for books and to the Circle K down the street, but yeah. Lots of teens here on Thursdays. I’m always reminded of the scene from High Fidelity: “They just started showing up every day. That was four years ago.”

So what have we done? Some examples:

– Monthly game nights, featuring the occasional tournament. We’ll be bringing back Minecraft in the fall once a quarter.

– Movie nights, sometimes with a featured food item (we made sundaes in January to watch Frozen, PF Chang-type lettuce wraps for Chinese New Year while we watched BOTH Kung Fu Panda movies, and made cotton candy [like the clouds?] when we watched & cried through TFIOS), and always with coloring sheets.

– Movie Premiere Parties: Maze Runner featured ‘Maze Races’, wherein I printed increasingly difficult mazes and the first to finish each one got a big Airhead (they LOVE those things!); Insurgent featured watching Divergent while they drew tattoos on each other and made t-shirts.

– Some featured events, like the annual Love Stinks Chocolate Fest and the Nightmare on Mahoning Ave, our Halloween party, still went as usual. I just made sure to schedule more less-expensive events (such as movie nights) during those months to save a bit of money. We also hosted the Ultimate Teen Challenge and threw a SuperWhoLock Party, both of which I’ll write about later, that were pricier than some of the others.

– We had a really excellent Retro Game Night, where I had the teens play old Sega games on our PS2, dragged out my husband’s old Dreamcast so they could play the original Soul Calibur and Crazy Taxi, and got out a few laptops and loaded up Oregon Trail (spoiler alert: most of them HAVE NOT EVEN HEARD OF THIS. I highly recommend this! And yes, they all died, much to their confusion, of dysentery.) I’m definitely doing this again.

– We hosted a few nights where the teens shared favorite Youtube videos, to varying success. They all might watch videos, but they watch very DIFFERENT videos, and when they were watching something they didn’t like, they were incredibly vocal about it. You had better believe that we had lots of conversations about rudeness, respect, and overall decency.

What I’ve found, even more than in past years, is that these teens cannot just watch a movie. They can’t just sit and do a craft. All of the programs have needed to be multidimensional, whether it’s the TV cart in the corner with some games available, a variety of board games and card games (Munchkin has been a big hit with my teens) for them to play during the movie or Youtube videos or whatever, and they need the freedom to talk and enjoy each other’s company. They still want something to be happening, but they are also perfectly comfortable sitting in the corner with a few friends seemingly ignoring what’s going on. It’s an interesting need, but I’m glad I can provide it.

Oh, and an outlet. Which is probably why they’re in the corner, but yeah. They have to have a place to plug in that phone.

Click here for the quarterly flyers of our weekly events so far!

[edit] As of March 2016, we’ve reverted back to a weekly game night with one monthly special event. Why?
1. In the fall, our attendance exploded and we have 30-50 kids each week, no matter the event. This, in turn, made the special events (especially the fandom events) much less special for those teens who came because they love Supernatural – most of the teens in room were just there to hang out with their friends, not to enjoy the special things I’d planned. There’s nothing worse than doing trivia that you’ve spent a good chunk of time preparing for a room filled with kids who have no idea what you’re talking about.

2. It was becoming exhausting, coming up with new stuff each week. And since we have SO MANY kids each week now (I am fully aware that none of you feel any sympathy towards this), I couldn’t do some of the more special stuff, since it’d get too expensive to do a $3 craft with 50 kids. And frankly, I MISSED doing big special events; finding the perfect craft or game.

3. No one ever watched the movie for movie nights, which kind of defeats the purpose.

4. All they want to do is play the consoles. It didn’t matter what the event was; every single week, without fail, they’d ask, ‘Is the Wii U going to be up there?’ I’d blink at them incredulously and say, ‘No. It’s a movie night. Why would the Wii U be on if we’re watching a movie on the screen?!?’

So now we’re back to Game Nights. We purchased an XBox 360 and a variety of games, and we have three consoles going plus board & card games for two hours. It’s worked pretty well so far – everyone seems happy to either play the games or just hang out. Happy teens, much less stressed out teen librarians = happier teen services.

Ahoy there, Teen Think Tankers!

These presentations were a part of the Teen Think Tank Event on September 19 at the Lima Public Library. In the interest of wanting to share with my fellow teen librarians, and to save some trees, I’ve made the resources available here.

Avast! The All-Important Hand Out!

Yo-Ho-Ho (& a bottle of whaddya mean you’re not into that anymore?)
Powerpoint // Slides PDF

Shiver me timbers, that’s AMAZING: Teen programs under $25
(adapted from Do More With Less)
Powerpoint // Slides PDF

Supplemental sources:
>> Live & Let Spy: Trivia, Caesar cipher, Morse code, & Running key cipher
>> Superheroes vs Villains Ultimate Showdown: Trivia // Challenge sheet
>> Night of the Ninja: Trivia
>> Doctor Who: Trivia through Time and Space
>> Mortal Instruments: City of Bones trivia
>> Supernatural Survival Skills 101: Trivia
>> Divergent: Trivia

Note: I don't have the answers for most trivia (sorry!), but all answers can be found online. Also, all Powerpoints include fancy, aptly-themed fonts, but if you search online for the font, you can easily install it. While playing the game, to return to the question grid, click the shape in the corner.

Doctor Who, Part Two

Doctor Who continues to be very popular amongst my teens, so we hosted another Who event this summer, this time just for teens (our previous program was all ages).

I found some fun videos on YouTube & put them into a playlist. My favorite was definitely a rather adorable fandom cover of Call Me Maybe. Give it a listen!

We played many games – Blink/Don’t Blink (a rather fast game of Red Light/Green Light, so we played it many times), Cyberman Says, and Toss the TARDIS. I discovered that my teens love to play any theme-specific game of hot potato, so of course we just tossed the TARDIS around to the theme song.

From our previous event, we again used the Gallifreyan translator but this time to make bottlecap keychains, and also made duct tape bow ties as well as Van Gogh coloring sheets for those who just want to hang out and watch the videos.

The biggest hit of the event was, by far, Guess Who. I would say that most of my teens had never played, with a surprising number that never even heard of it.They played this continuously all night, with many arguments ensuing (is River a villain or a hero?). They came up with the rule that Captain Jack is human, but the Face of Boe is not, being rather nice to those new fans who are still catching up.

I threw this together after seeing it on Tumblr, and the graphics & instructions for making your own is here at Karen Kavett’s blog.

The big craft of the evening was SPACE JARS. I followed the directions from Martha Stewart to make snow globes, only we tipped the jars right-side-up, and added a dangling TARDIS.

Supplies!
Jars (ask your staff to save or purchase)
Polymer clay
Silver jump rings
Fishing line
Hot glue gun
Glitter & confetti
Water
White marker pens
Black permanent marker
Glycerin (optional)

How to do it!
TARDIS:
1. Create rectangles from blue polymer clay. I was able to get eight out of each pack.
2. Press jump ring into top.
3. Bake according to instructions (I did steps 1-3 prior to event)
4. Using markers, add doors & windows.

JAR:
1. Hot glue fishing line to jar lid. (also done prior to event)
2. Tie fishing line to jump ring on top of the TARDIS.
3. Add glitter & confetti.
4. Fill with water.
5. Add a squirt of glycerin, which helps slow glitter’s descent to bottom. (A bonus, but not required.)
6. Tighten jar lid, gluing to seal if desired. (We did not do this part; the jars were fine.)
7. Decorate top of jar as desired with quotes, pictures, etc.
8. Shake up the jar to the theme music!

Be sure to ask if you have any questions!