Evolution of a TAG—Teen Choice at the Aurora Free Library
RSSAlyssa Binns Gunderson, Teen Advisory Group Coordinator
Thanks to some generous funding from the Bernard Carl and Shirley Rosen Library Fund, the Aurora (NY) Free Library's teen services are better than ever. A new program, "Teen Choice: Leading, Reading, and Writing @ the Aurora Free Library," puts kids in the driver's seat to select programs and services in conjunction with the local Southern Cayuga School District and other community partners. My job is to help our teen advisory group (TAG) make some good, satisfying choices, and, in the process, help kids' develop their leadership skills. Having worked with students for most of my professional life, I was surprised and impressed with our group's first meeting. With very little input from me, our kids brainstormed some terrific ideas for workshops, book talks, and community service projects, along with extracurricular topics they'd like to learn more about, such as photography, graphic design, improvisational acting, digital video editing, and books that've been made into movies. While we librarians sometimes feel like teens only want to be entertained, I think it's a mistake to believe that our programming has to be big and impressive to attract them. In addition to our kids' curiosity about a wide range of topics, I was impressed with how tech-savvy they were. We're able to do much of our planning via email, which is very convenient for everyone. A few of our younger members use their parents' email accounts to stay in touch with the group, and I'm always sure to copy our messages to the library director. That way, our communication is very open, and it helps everyone stay informed and involved. Since our 18 members are heavily involved in school and other activities, it's probably no surprise that our greatest challenge is figuring out the most convenient times to meet. To tackle that, we've set up some subcommittees. Teens sign up for the events that they're most interested in and work together in small planning groups. (We also meet as an entire group once a month.) As the group's coordinator, this arrangement creates a little more work for me, but it's a wonderful way to get things done, keep things manageable, and give kids an additional opportunity to step up as leaders. It's a lot of work to get teens involved in meaningful projects, but the payoff can be incredible. Although our program is still in its early days, we're already looking forward to attracting more teens in the coming year and to including them as valuable members of our library. This article originally appeared in School Library Journal's enewsletter SLJTeen. Subscribe here. Very exciting work that you're doing with the TAG! Their interest in so
many things "beyond books" but clearly belonging in your library is really
neat...very 21st century. Children's poet Joan Bransfield Graham sent me
your article because your TAG reminded her of our TAG (a recently-
released P*TAG poetry eBook for teens). I think it'd be great if your TAG
wanted to do their own poetry eBook project...
* = Required information
Just weeks after our initial meeting (photo left), we launched a group page on Facebook, which, of course, is a great way to attract new members and to share information with local teens. One of our TAG members created the page, and I share administrative privileges. We haven't developed the page to its full potential yet, but I'm confident that we will as we talk more about how best to market our group and its activities.
It's been two months since we first met, and we've successfully hosted our first event-an improvisational acting workshop led by a local Wells College theater professor. What other exciting events do we have in mind? We plan to offer some holiday programs at the library, as well as workshops on musical-theater dance and digital video editing. We'll also be hosting a series in March on Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, which will coincide with the release of the movie version. We'll start with a book talk, go as a group to see the film, and wrap everything up with a discussion of how the movie compares to the original novel. Based on how excited our kids were when they were planning this activity, I bet it'll be our biggest event of the year. When spring arrives, we're also planning to get outside and help with our library's beautification projects with a gardening workshop.
Reader Comments (2)
Posted by Janet Wong on October 19, 2011 05:51:56PM
