Last day!!

Weird. I'm home in Indy and it's 10:19 AM meaning in Portland it's 7:20 AM. This will take a little getting used to.

Yesterday I had two pre-conferences, one on Teen Volunteering and one on Save Your A. S. S. (After School Sanity). I came up with one idea on changing the way I "hire" and train my teen volunteers that I'm really excited about. I'm thinking about having quarterly training sessions that you have to attend if you want to be a volunteer. It could be a day long or 1/2 day long workshop on a Saturday and it would encompass having a big tour of the library, learning lots of different tasks that volunteers do, doing one big volunteer project if we have things to do (counting newsletters, anyone?), and then giving them time to write 100 words on why they want to volunteer and why they'd be good. I could have individual meetings with each kid while everyone else is working on the big task and I'd get to know how the kids act in a group, one on one, and whether or not they are serious about volunteering. I'd give them a service hour for doing the one big task and after the workshop they could apply to be a volunteer. I could also make it a competitive process and let them know by letter or phone call whether or not they "made it." Kind of excited about this.

Save Your After School Sanity was pretty darn good. It was all about learning to handle teens in your building during that 3-5 time slot when they all come over from the schools. There were some common sense things like using simple phrases when encountering teens, keeping expectations clear, not getting emotional or unprofessional ever when communicating your needs as far as the library and other patrons go, and not smiling when you are correcting their behavior (don't send mixed messages). They had a great speaker from a youth serving organization in Minnesota that wasn't a library and how his organization worked with the library to coordinate their efforts in this area. They also talked about staff training, being consistent throughout the building in your procedures, and sharing the responsibilities of doing regular library patrols during your busiest times. Another good thought they had involved looking at the layout of the library. We have a huge open space right in front of our circulation desk. We have teens that run through there and congregate there and know what? If we just put some displays there it might provide a sort of physical barrier to that kind of behavior. Also we could install some kind of sound dampening dome over our vending area and then the noise from that area of the library might not be so distracting. All in all it was a neat session. I was also thinking of trying to produce an After School Guide for teens in our community listing all the organizations that offer services to teens during that 3-5 or 6 time period. Then we could really coordinate our efforts to serve teens more effectively.

After those two sessions I had to hop on the train, board the plane, and get my behind back to Indy. SO sad about missing Sarah Vowell speak. I am pretty sure though that I got to see Mount St. Helen from the plane. Took about a million pictures.

This will probably be my last post about PLA-Portland. I had a great conference. I wanted to thank the Indiana Youth Institute for awarding me a professional development grant to help me go. I had a wonderful time, met great new friends, and came back to my library with two major ideas to hold onto in the future: Be More of a Leader, and Coordinate with my Community.

Really looking forward to implementing all I've learned into my library!

Thanks for reading!

Indiana Youth Institute
Sarah Vowell
Mt. St. Helen