by Traci Glass I want to share with you my very, very favorite program and collaboration idea. I used to live and work in Arizona where I ran the Battle of the Books Program in collaboration with the wonderful school librarians in the Gilbert School District while I was a Children’s Librarian at the Southeast Regional Library. The truly awesome Friends of the Southeast Regional Library sponsored the program. Together we helped 5th and 6th graders read wonderful books, analyze them, and meet new friends in a program that lasted throughout the school year and culminated in an end of the year City Battle. Never heard of Battle of the Books? Let me give you a basic rundown… Since I am most familiar with Arizona’s system, I will give you the heads-up on that, even though from what research I’ve done on the program, it’s pretty similar from state to…
Author: tglass
No Job is Too Small for…the Tween Teamers!!
by Traci Glass Today I had the first meeting of the Spring Session of Teen Team — a volunteer program for middle and high school students. Much to my great joy, I had a lot of tweeners this time — usually Teen Team has more than its share of Juniors & Seniors due to the really stringent volunteering requirements that the local high schools implement in their accelerated program. With older teens I’ve noticed that they get interested in the volunteering program when they see the advertisement — we try to put them in a variety of places, in their schools, here in our Teen Center, and also in our library newsletter. The older teens fill out the forms themselves, call me with questions, and take on the responsibility of participating in the program. However, this time we did a lot of press leading up to the start of the…
Rock and Roll All Nite…um…I Mean Afternoon…
by Traci Glass I just discovered a great new way to bring more tweens into my library — gaming! I know, I know, video gaming in libraries has been around for awhile now, but last Thursday was my library’s first foray into the venture, even though I’ve been gaming at home for years! Future Guitar Gods (most of them tweens) were born as I sat back and enjoyed the sounds of Nirvana, Heart, and Sonic Youth on a workday, no less! Not only did they play video games, but they were amazed to see the library’s great collection of gaming magazines and books, including Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro. They were also super excited to meet new gamers (which included me!)! Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero III were definitely the star games, and my mind was filled for the rest of the day with the guitar solos from Mississippi…
Tweens & Teens…Book Clubbing in Harmony
by Traci Glass About a year ago, I was hired into my very first Teen Librarian position. Technically, I was hired to serve tweens and teens. Unfortunately, tweens haven’t been frequenting my teen room or the programs I’ve offered. However, I had a breakthrough that I’d really been hoping for…I had two tweens make the big step from our 4th through 6th grade book club into my teen book club! I was so excited to have new members that I didn’t realize that I might have some new challenges in regards to discussion topics, books chosen, and the acceptance of younger members by the older book clubbers. When I started my new job this past January, my book club was well established by my predecessor; it had a core group of teens who attended every month. They knew what they wanted to eat (natural snacks) and what kind of books…