I’ve been watching a lot of Top Chef recently. Too much? That’s debatable. Luckily, there are 17 seasons available on Hulu, so my free time is well spent. All this competitiveness and love for their craft makes me want to create my own competition, Top Librarian: Children Services Edition.
Quickfire Challenges:
- A important community partner has brought a group of Kindergarteners to the library for a unannounced tour of the library, story time, and a STEAM activity. You have 30 minutes to prepare.
- Your Director has found a $1000.00 surplus in the budget that has to be used by the end of the day. You have one hour to plan for how to use this money to fund your programs for the year.
- The Mayor wants to use the library for a photo opp on the evening news. Your Director has told you that they will be by for a walkthrough in 30 minutes, you have a room of 6 bays of bookcases to find the perfect face out books full of diverse, engaging titles, that may be a bit tongue in cheeck.
- Emergency Craft: Grabbing a random box of program scraps, you must plan a craft that is appropriate for age 2-5, but engaging enough that a 10 year old would enjoy. You have one hour.
Elimination Challenges:
- You have 2 days to prepare a community literacy event at your library. You must include 2 programs, and 3 activtities, and at least one community partnership. The theme is: Bugs/Insects.
- You must work as a team of 3 to do a tandem story time for 2nd graders in a school audtiorium with horrible acoustics. You have an hour to prepare. Everyone must do the same amount of work.
- The library is taking over activities and tours for a local museum. You will work in a team of 8 to coordinate a whole day of programs at the museum. You have 4 hours to prepare. You must have one program on each hour. The museum is open for children and their families ages 2-12.
- Endless Desk Shift Challenge: Go head to head with your competitors and see how long you can sit at the reference desk during after school rush hours, and still remain polite and engaging.
Which challenges do you think you would win at? Can you imagine any other fun competitions? Maybe one day we will get to see this competition play out!