How to use this Page

Awhile ago I was a 7th grade language arts teacher. My last year in the classroom I had one of the coolest classes that may have ever been compiled. It was the last… Read More →

I’ve been preparing for the graduate course, “Children’s Literature in Teaching Writing,”  I’m teaching in June every time my daughter goes down for a nap, heads to sleep, etc.  I read through a… Read More →

I have three gems for you. I. LOVE. These. Books. Love them. Micah Player previously worked for Paul Frank Industries. His illustrations and story are whimsical made me fall in love on the spot. Check out Chronicle Books website for more information on CHLOE INSTEAD. I’m looking forward to using this text in writing workshop for these [...]

The 2012 ALA Emerging Leaders Team E is researching the planning and implementation of a mentoring program for the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC).

As part of the research, the team is asking ALSC members and non-members to complete a 21-question survey that studies the interest and feasibility of such a program.

To take this survey, please click on the link below. The survey should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. The deadline to take the survey is Tuesday, April 24, 2012.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NGZ2MP7

Please contact Kim Alberts at [email protected] with any questions about this survey. Thank you in advance for your help.

In one of the kindergarten classrooms I’ve been working in, we’ve been learning: Writers share their opinions. This has been a unit of study inspired by the Common Core State Standards, which place a heavy emphasis on opinion writing. What does that look like in kindergarten, I wondered. So I’ve been trying out a few [...]

This is a collaborative blog post written by a protege and mentor in YALSA’s mentoring program. Jennifer is the protege and Linda is the mentor. We’ve been working together over the past several months talking about how to effectively gain support for teen services and how to work with administration to let them know all about the great activities and work being done by teen librarians. As our conversations developed we realized that what we were talking about made for a great blog post, or series of blog posts. Our first post is on how to gain support from administration for teen projects.

Jennifer Gets Things Started
When I get a chance to request support (professional development funding, support in expanding programming across the system, etc.), I know I need to make my case clearly and concisely. Often, I find the best way of doing that is connecting my goals with the ‘big picture’ goals on which administration focuses their work.

Highlighting community collaborations is one tactic that works for me. Sure, admin might be impressed that your Teen Art Club is well-attended. But they’ll be even more impressed if your Teen Art Club is connecting with the teens at the neighborhood recreation center, gaining support from a local gallery or museum, and being promoted by educators. Demonstrating that YA services help connect the library with other community organizations gets straight to the big picture that admin works toward on a daily basis.

Another reason for administration to get excited about teen services: library advocacy.

If you’re collaborating with other community agencies and organizations, making connections and networking with educators, you’re also establishing the library as a cornerstone of the community and demonstrating its relevance and value. Getting the public excited about your organization’s teen services is a fantastic way to advocate for your library, and for libraries in general. If you can prove to your administrative team that selling quality teen services to the community highlights the library as a neighborhood destination, and drives the organization toward its larger vision (as a cultural center, a learning hotspot, whatever the goal may be), everyone wins—teen services, admin, and the public.

Finally, it all comes down to serving teens and instilling a love of information and learning into their lives, which is something everyone in the library should care about. Working with administration to sell great teen services isn’t difficult as long as everyone’s goals are being met and you know how to speak to your administrative team’s needs. The bottom line is that bringing teens into the library, and engaging them with great services, makes the library a better organization—and administration will happily support that.

Linda Adds
I love Jennifer’s approach for gaining administrative support for library teen services. I think this goes a long way to gaining the support needed. One thing that I see teen librarians struggle with is working with administration when there is a problem that needs to be solved. For example, maybe a teen services staff member notices that other staff members are not providing high quality service to teens. I’ve seen that in some instances teen services staff approach administrators with that problem, bad customer service to teens by some staff members, but nothing more. A teen libraria

Lots of news to catch up on…

1.)  First of all, THOMAS AND THE DRAGON QUEEN was listed last year by the New York Public Library as one of their recommended top 100 books. Yay! Listed in: “100 Titles for Reading and Sharing.”

2.) And . . . I’m happy dancing for a good friend of mine and a writer I mentored a year or so ago. Her name is Tracy Bilen. She won me as a novel mentor for a year in Michigan’s SCBWI (Soc. of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) group. Her manuscript had the basics of a great read…a riveting plot and an empathetic main character. But it needed deepening and developing. She worked hard, took many of my suggestions and always did the homework I suggested. Just this week she received an offer from Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Schuster. YAY!  I think I am more excited about this than anything else that’s happened lately.  It’s so fun to know that soon another great young adult novel will be in the hands of readers. It will make its debut in 2012. Hugs to Tracy!!! (And we’ll roll out the red carpet when the book comes out.)

3.) A really different and fun book just made the news on National Public Radio. It’s called YOU CAN COUNT ON MONSTERS by Richard Evan Schwartz. It’s not a picture book–though it’s all about pictures of monsters (and numbers).  I’ve highlighted it to the right. Enjoy!

4.) Wow!!  Michigan rocks…In the recent ALA awards Erin Stead won the Caldecott Medal for A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE (written by her husband Philip). Sure am proud to live in Michigan!

Shutta

by Estella Gonzalez, guest bloguera

Estella Gonzalez was born and raised in East Los Angeles, which inspires most of her writing. Her work has been anthologized in Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature published by Bilingual Press and Kaleidoscope published by Pima Press. Her writing has also appeared in Puerto del Sol, Sandscript and Eleven Eleven.

Back in the 80s I knew I wanted to become a writer when my high school’s literary magazine published one of my stories. It was called “The Brotherhood” and it was about a girl who wanted to infiltrate her crush’s group of male friends so badly, she actually became a boy. Very corny but seeing the story in print and appreciated by my teachers boosted my confidence. Still, I wouldn’t seriously consider pursuing fiction writing until about 15 years later when I finally built up the courage and confidence. For many writers the decision to commit to writing can be harrowing, especially if you’re a writer of color from a working class background. For me it was particularly scary since I didn’t personally know any active Chicano writers and wouldn’t read any Latino literature until well after college. Becoming a writer, a real published writer, seemed like a pipe dream but despite the self-doubt I began writing in earnest and eventually publishing.

Flash forward to 2010 and WriteGirl, a Los Angeles-based volunteer mentoring organization I wish had existed back when I was in high school. WriteGirl provides high school girls a safe, supportive community to express themselves through the exploration of writing including poetry, journalism, songwriting, screen writing, etc. I found this wonderful organization on the Internet when I was looking for a Latina writing group close to East Los Angeles.

Little did I know that WriteGirl would offer a writing group and then some. About once a month I not only get to participate in writing workshops with a group of professional writing women, I also get to mentor enthusiastic high school girls, many of whom are Latina and African-American. And WriteGirl doesn’t mess around. At the organization’s first poetry workshop held at the Miguel Contreras Learning Center, writing began as soon as the girls walked in to the writing space. In this case the cafeteria. After signing in, the girls quickly partnered up with their mentors to write haikus on various topics including love, family, and hunger before they went on to join larger groups of writers to create living tableaus of their poetry. After the group performance, local Angeleno poets Xotchil-Julisa Bermejo and Eloise Klein Healy led us on some invigorating poetry exercises. It was the first time in years that I had written some meaningful poems.

Founded by songwriter, poet and freelance writer Keren Taylor, WriteGirl is an activist feminist writer’s dream. In addition to participa

I have been in a lot of different writing workshops lately. Just this week I’ve been in 13 writing workshops and have met with 13 different teachers in either reflective practice meetings or planning meetings. Therefore, I have SO MUCH I want to record. Which leads me to my current dilemma: what do I not [...]

YALSA is pleased to offer the following professional development opportunities in June. If you have questions about YALSA’s professional development, please contact Eve Gaus, YALSA’s program officer for continuing education, at [email protected] or 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5293.

June 2, First Wednesdays with YALSA: YALSA’s First Wednesdays continue with an online chat this month at 8 p.m. Eastern, this time on managing your teen advisory board, hosted by Evie Wilson-Lingbloom. We will be using a private room in Meebo for the chat; the password to log in is available to YALSA members at this ALA Connect post. See you next Wednesday!

June 17, YA Classics Webinar: Join Sarah Debraski, YALSA past president, for a discussion of YA classics. Sarah will highlight YA novels from 1951 -2003, discussing their themes and issues and how YA librarians can connect teens with these classics. Participants will receive a list of 25 go-to titles that they can use for readers advisory or to add to their collection.  This webinar will take place Thursday, June 17, at 2 p.m. Eastern. Register today! Registration costs $39 for individual YALSA members, $49 for all other individuals. A group rate of $195 is available. Learn more about YALSA webinars at www.ala.org/yalsa/webinars.

Save the Date for Upcoming Webinars: YALSA has scheduled its next three webinars. Join us July 15 for Risky Business, hosted by Linda Braun;  August 19 for Back to the Facts: YA Nonfiction, hosted by Angela Carstensen; and September 16 for Ready, Set, Go! 30 Ways to Reach Reluctant Readers in 60 Minutes, hosted by Jen Hubert Swan. Learn more about YALSA webinars at www.ala.org/yalsa/webinars

Mentoring Program Applications Open: YALSA’s new mentoring program will pair an experienced librarian (more than 6 years’ experience) with a new librarian (fewer than 6  years’ experience) or graduate student in a library science program. YALSA believes that we all have important skills and knowledge that we can share with one another and so this program encourages protégés to share their skills and know-how with their mentor. YALSA will accept applications through June 30. Learn more and apply at www.ala.org/yalsa/mentoring.

YALSA Summer Online Course Registration: Registration is now open for YALSA’s summer online courses! In Beyond Booklists: Serving Diverse Today’s Diverse Teens, instructor Jennifer Velasquez will guide participants in serving today’s diverse generation, including ways to design, implement and evaluate more in-depth services and programs for today’s diverse teen population and recent teen immigrants. Participants will al

YALSA is pleased to offer the following professional development opportunities in April. If you have questions about YALSA’s professional development, please contact Eve Gaus, YALSA’s program officer for continuing education, at [email protected] or 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5293.

April 5, Mentoring Program Applications open: YALSA’s new mentoring program will pair an experienced librarian (more than 6 years’ experience) with a new librarian (fewer than 6 years’ experience) or graduate student in a library science program. YALSA believes that we all have important skills and knowledge that we can share with one another and so this program encourages protégés to share their skills and know-how with their mentor. YALSA will accept applications through June 30. Learn more at www.ala.org/yalsa/mentoring.

April 7, First Wednesdays with YALSA: YALSA’s First Wednesdays continue with an online chat this month at 8 p.m. Eastern, this time on programming for older teens, hosted by Penny Johnson, convenor of the Serving New Adults Interest Group. We will again be using Meebo for the chat, but we’ve made a few adjustments. We’ve created a private room; the password to log in is available to YALSA members at this ALA Connect post. See you next Wednesday!

April 22, Back to Basics Webinar: ALSA’s Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth play a key role in everyday service to young adult patrons. Join Sarah Flowers, author of Young Adults Deserve the Best: Putting YALSA’s Competencies into Action, to discuss practical ways to promote and apply the YALSA Competencies to ensure quality library service to the teens in your community. This webinar will take place on Thursday, April 22, at 2 p.m. Eastern. Registration is $39 for individual YALSA members, $49 for all other individuals.  Register today! Group registration costs $195 and is available by contacting Eve Gaus at [email protected] or 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5293. Learn more about our webinars at www.ala.org/yalsa/webinars.