Teen Advisory Board 8/20/2016

Present: Chris, Frissel, Julia, KC, Brittany, Laura, Hadley, Madison, McKenna, David, Lucy, Jane L, Meep, Luke, Lauren

Agenda

  • Announcements.
  • Basic volunteer rules.
  • Basic TAB rules.
  • Review Summer Reading.
  • Current projects
  • Murder Mystery planning
  • Continuing the discussion

Announcements

This is Julia’s last TAB meeting.

Lauren has been invited to be on the Youth Council.  Julia was previously our only representative on Youth Council, so this comes at a great time!

Rules

  • Do not share the code
  • Wear your tag
  • Do not let your friends/family into the backrooms unless they are just waiting for you to leave (no more than 5 minutes)
  • Do not hang out in the backrooms if you are not working at the time
  • Put all supplies back
  • Clean up (crumbs, water bottles, chips bags, etc.)
  • Check in with Jane (whenever available) or a children’s staff member at scheduled shifts
  • Report any misconduct
  • Do not take it upon yourself to change the time of your scheduled shift; always ask first.

These are all established City of Pasadena policies and procedures.

This is on the volunteer contract.

 

Basic TAB rules:

  • At least 1 monthly meeting ~ meetings are currently on a Saturday afternoon at 4pm; we may be adding another meeting on a weekday in Fall 2016. (Must attend at least 75% of the Saturday meetings.)
  • Year round commitment
  • Additional individual project/responsibility (Project shifts – as a TAB member, you are required to participate and take an interest in most teen services initiatives and programs; you show your interest by attending/leading/planning these events & initiatives.)
  • Wants to be a leader or gain skills to become a good leader
  • Cares about our library and the wellness of teens in our community
  • Excellent communication skills and highly dedicated
  • Ability to work well independently and with the rest of TAB
  • Tracking hours – anything you do at home (like editing the zine, online book lists) should be tracked in hours and reported

How does one continue on TAB?

Everything above, dedication, responsible, step up.  I will be approaching everyone about special projects.  I’ll try to find the best fit.  Shifts will ideally be during times I am available.

Review Summer Reading

Numbers:  This year, the teen program had 445 participants; last year, we had 379 teen participants.  Our retention rate compared to last year is close.  We were at 31% last year, and 26% this year.  The 12 year olds and the 18-19 year olds appreciated the option of participating in the teen program.

Prizes:  The feedback from staff and random patrons generally show that the prizes were well liked, however, those that chose preferred books as their prizes and were used to the wide selection at Central Library, preferred last year’s method (which was a full cart of teen book selections); this is not the case at our branch libraries.

Online system:  Comparing last year’s program to this year’s, the difference between using the Evanced vs. Reading by Design software was not entirely dissimilar.  TAB did not see an improvement in the interaction with the software, though noted that it was more intuitive to enter in their books read, but not their activity points.

Badges:  Digital badges as a whole was not encouraging for most.  As a method to enter in their activities, they preferred last year’s method (which was simply typing in their activities and being rewarded a flat number of points) instead of this year’s–which required participants to search through pages of badges to find the right one.

Points and earning prizes:  TAB wishes there was a way to show participants how many points they needed to earn to get a prize.  Since the software does not combine the points (reading points and activity points), it was not as clear when a prize was earned.  Also, they would like to do the weekly drawings again; this encourages participants to continue entering in their activities throughout the summer even if they’ve already picked up their 3 prizes.

 

Current projects

Mental Health Initiative

Sept. 3 (also next TAB meeting) – your statements about our mission

Sept. 17 – book festival – Aija Mayrock, Kerry Kletter, Robin Reul, Ingrid Sundberg, Julie Buxbaum,

Testing MH apps – thorough test and write reviews – someone with a lot of interest in this (Meep, Jane L?) calm, headspace, virtual hope box

Advocacy toolkit – We’ll try to schedule time with Day One, but most of this could be done virtually on Google Docs.

Today, I interviewed two teen volunteers from Teen Line.

Oct. 8 NAMI Ending the Silence

Nov. staff training – Teen Mental Health First Aid

Dec. movie – It’s Kind of a Funny Story (depression, psychiatric hospital), based on a book by Ned Vizzini

YA Book Club

Sep-Dec meetings will be led by Kara.  Jane L. and McKenna will get an opportunity to co-lead meetings since Kara will be graduating next year.

We still need to select titles for Nov +.

We are considering applying for the book club to be a YALSA Teens Top Ten library. We’ll discuss this at our next book club meeting in Sept and via email.

Winter program series-vote by email

2013:  book clocks

2014:  tshirts, game night, snow globes, gingerbread houses

2015:  metal etching + no cook truffles, book swap, book clocks, game day

2016: vote

Painting shoes [example]

Painting mugs + coasters [example mugs, example coasters]

Tote bags [example]

Literary Scarves [example]

Ornaments

Finger scarves

Stockings

Murder Mystery — working groups

Lead- Haneen, Kara

Scripts – *Hadley, Laura

Location clues – Madison, *Lauren, Luke, Chris

Weapon clues – Brittany, *KC

Decorations/atmosphere – *Meep, Frissel, McKenna, Jane L, Lucy, David

Working groups schedule

Card for Jan

Our Library Director Jan is retiring next week. Kara has written up her interview with Jan and Julia has made a big card.  We need a photo of TAB.

These notes are for record purposes only. For more information about attending events, please see our website:  http://cityofpasadena.net/library/teens/events_and_programs/

To join the Teen Advisory Board, the application and description can be found on our website:  http://cityofpasadena.net/library/teens/volunteering/#Teen_Advisory_Board