Tales from a Loud Librarian

Birds of a Feather Flock to the Library Teen Tech Week @ PFTSTA Library March 25-29 I know that Teen Tech Week (TTW) and Teen Read Week (TRW) may not be long for this world. Both of these initiatives have been sponsored by YALSA for years, and I can hardly remember a time when I did not celebrate them in my library. In the future, it seems that YALSA wants to promote more activities for teens year round rather than just for two weeks every year. In my library, I serve tweens and teens all school year long. I like the idea of having a special week in the fall and one in the spring to highlight what the library has to offer. Even if these weeks are no longer sanctioned by YALSA, I expect to plan and execute a week's worth of fun twice a year anyway. Certainly, I can do that, but without other libraries doing the same across the US, sharing on social media does not have as big an impact when I am the only one sharing. TTW had a national roll out on March 9t...

With three lunches, it is no longer possible to plan activities during Teen Tech Week (TTW) that are very time consuming for the students or take lots of extra pairs of hands to pull off. That is okay, because I think that I have figured out ways to simplify our planned activities but still offer five fun activities in the library for each day of the week. Also, I had to move TTW to accommodate for the fact that I was at a library conference the week before. This meant that I had to have everything ready to go before I left town for the conference that included lots of advertising to the students so that they would be ready for TTW when I returned to school that Monday. Garden Party Students engrossed  I plan a different activity each day at lunch and usually have some other passive game that might be available all week in the library or online. We always start the week by showing animated shorts. This all began because TTW is scheduled near the Academy Awards, a...

Teen Tech Week March 12 th – 16 th PFTSTA LIBRARY: All Reader’s Welcome Monday:                     Treat with a Movie Kick off Teen Tech Week and visit the library during your lunch period to watch a movie and have a sweet treat. Showing will be the Oscar winning animated short by Kobe Bryant,  Dear Basketball , as well as several other animated shorts including Lou and Garden Party which were both nominated for an Oscar. Tuesday:                     Mosaics with Rubik’s Cubes Using 100 Rubik’s Cubes , you and your friends will have a pattern to follow to create a mosaic picture using all of the cubes. The library is borrowing the cubes so they will only be available for a short time. Wednesday:           ...

For Teen Tech Week , I wanted to create some kind of contest where I would provide a grand prize. The contest would be designed to have students submit some sort of written piece, and then I would randomly draw two names for the grand prize winners, one from middle school and one from high school. I like the idea that the winners are selected randomly and that just by entering the contest all students had an equal chance to win. Thinking about it, I decided that I would ask the kids to submit a review of a book, movie, or game that they would like to recommend to their friends. I gave wide parameters of what they could review. The students had to submit one paragraph with a brief summary and one paragraph explaining why they would recommend the book, movie or game to their friends. I created a Google form for them to submit, so it was easy to share on the library website and in emails. The students chose from new and old and below is a pie chart showing what they chose to review. It w...

Sporting one of the prizes for the Fast Finger Search Our school has grown exponentially since we moved into the new building three years ago. This year was the first time that three lunches were needed in the schedule. With three lunches, I have lost the ability to have the older students help with the activities for the 6th and 7th graders. While the 6th and 7th grade are at lunch the 8th-12th grade are in the middle of 3rd period and vice versa. Before we just flipped study hall and lunch for all students, so I could get the older students out of study hall to volunteer in the library for the little ones. Lunch everyday is a very long process. The 6th and 7th grade go to lunch at 11AM and the 8th graders don't finish lunch until 1:10PM. I am open every day for all lunches unless there is a class scheduled with me. Selecting a signed ARC by last week's visiting author for his prize Even though I would be sailing solo, I still wanted to have a robust slate of acti...