Teen Advisory Board 5/14/2016

Present: Bella, Chris, Hadley, Haneen, Jane L, Lauren, Madison, Maya, Meep

Special guest: Ms. Deb Takahashi, Librarian from Santa Catalina & Linda Vista Branch Library

Announcements & summer projects:

  • Pasadena Loves YA:  Those of you who have volunteered to read & review this summer, I’ll connect back with you in a couple of weeks. I’m putting Hadley in charge of organizing some of the panel questions. The authors for this year’s event have been announced: www.pasadenateenbookfestival.com
  • Next meeting: June 11. It’s also the first day of SRC. We’ll be going out into the community delivering promotional materials.  This would also be a good time to scout out which areas to walk to for Ingress.
  • Volunteer party is on June 12.
  • TAB shirts – wear them
  • Volunteer data organization–Lauren’s project
  • Summer volunteering: Whoever wants to take a regular weekly schedule during summer is welcome to. Please check with me to see what times will work. These shifts can be used to complete some of your summer TAB projects. If you want to work with someone else from TAB, that’s fine, too.
  • Book clubs:  Hadley and Madison will lead book club this summer.
  • Murder mystery:  We’ll start planning the murder mystery in July. It’s Alice in Wonderland themed.
  • Teen Book lists: adding new topics – Chris’s project
  • Kids Book lists: updating online lists, noting books that do not have enough copies – Madison’s project
  • We’re canceling the May 22 Night Vale event.
  • We have decided that Forbidden Island as a life-size game is too complicated to work out at the moment. I am changing this to a Teen Summer Olympics. It’ll be a 1 hour event where teens can compete in various obstacle courses (like limbo, going through tunnels, jumping rope, human hungry hippo, going through zig zaggy streamers, stuff like that).  Minute to win it challenges. We’ll have to think of prizes and how to assign points, or maybe have judges.
  • Who’s going to laser tag on Thursday July 28?  -Julia will help plan.

Discussion

Underserved teens – Next year, we (Teen Services) want to really focus on services on one of these groups. They’re all important, but in order to serve them well, we need to focus on creating services for one group at a time, one step at a time. We’d like to hear your thoughts on the following: Teens with mental illness, Teens with special needs, Teens experiencing homelessness, Teen parents, LGBTQ.

After reviewing what we’re already doing for these groups and potential challenges, TAB decided to focus on Mental Health. May also happens to be Mental Health Month.

Ideas proposed by TAB:

  • Provide a drop in counseling session (weekly or monthly)
  • Create a research & resource center on the 4th floor about mental health
  • Book & buddy club… like a one-on-one book club?  Like for teens/young adults who can be paired up with an older person who has similar experiences?
  • Workshops for people who have teen friends or family who may have mental illness
  • Raising awareness events
  • Books that have themes of mental illness to help teens who don’t have as much exposure
  • Movie nights with films about mental illness to encourage conversation

Let’s continue our conversation via email to flush out these ideas.

 

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