Hey friends out in youth library land....I'm baaaaaack!
We had such a great time in spring exploring together the range of youth programming and smart and savvy ways to make it easier, that I am repeating the course beginning in January.
Join me for
Power Children's Programming - on a Budget, a six week on-line course for the UW Madison SLIS Continuing Education beginning the week of January 26. It is open to anyone, in-state or out-of-state, who is interested in this subject.
This course is perfect for any youth staffer interested in digging more deeply into programming for children, preschool through elementary ages. We'll explore: why we do what we do; how to do it better; negotiating the tricky currents of available staff, time, money
and patron reactions. You'll expand your community of programming peeps through robust dialogue, program shares and down-right feisty argument.
Since it's an asynchronous course, you can dip into the content anytime each week. Lectures and readings are a mix of written text, webinars, slideshares, video and links to seminal posts about programming from bloggers including
Sara Bryce,
Anne Clark,
Amy Comers,
Melissa Depper,
Abby Johnson, Amy Koester,
Angie Manfredi,
Brooke Newberry,
Katie Salo,
Beth Saxton and our friends at the
ALSC,
Little eLit and
Thrive Thursday blogs.
We'll revive our class programming blog
Kids Library Program Mojo that will fill with new content as the ideas and programs start popping up in the course and being shared. Coursework in this pass/fail course takes about 2-3 hours a week and the two brief assignments allow you to hone your thinking on programming (be an advocate!) and create/share a program. What could be more fun?
I hope you consider joining me for this most excellent learning adventure. I plan to learn as much as I teach!
Graphic courtesy of Pixabay
Amy Koester of Show Me Librarian and I are tag-teaming at our blogs this week to report out the Chicago ALA Conversation Starter -Unprogramming: Recipes for School Age Success - that we led on Monday July 2 (see below for links to the whole series). Please join our continuing conversation in the comments or on Twitter by using the hashtag #unprogramming. Amy and I were both so excited to have a chance to share the thoughts behind unprogramming at a national conference level. And we were uber pleased to have a SRO crowd of colleagues come to the program.
What's fun about unprogramming is that it really isn't new. Most of you are doing unprogramming already in big and little ways. We are simply pulling the threads together and encouraging everyone to try this more mellow approach and see real benefits. Just starting the conversation, so to speak.
The audience at our program joined the conversation and shared great ideas of how they have used the unprogramming concept in their programs. Below are a few quick ideas people shared of programs they are doing:
Painting to Music - kids pull up music on YouTube and then paint while listening to it. Disfferent beats elicit different art responses. The art the kids create is then hung in the room.
Stamping - using Ed Emberley's books as inspiration, kids use stampers and stamp pads to create their own nique creations.
Bibliobop - combining books with music and dance
"Training Camps" - train kids to be a cowboy or pirate or logger or astronaut in these free-form programs that allow kids to pick up "skills" they need to become mighty.
Book Club - kids choose individual books to each read and then videotape interviews with each other booktalking their choice.
Guys Read Club - always done with a book component as well as a "smashing" component (water balloons off a roof; TV drop)
Plus Stuffed Animal Sleepovers, Teddy Bear Clinics, Messy Art Club!
Please share ideas for your unprograms in the comments or under the #unprogramming hashtag on twitter.
We
storified the twitter feed for more audience reactions and ideas. Amy will finish our series today with our slide deck.
Thanks for joining us so we could share the fun of this program from ALA in the blogosphere with all of you. And thanks to Amy for being the best presentation partner one could have!
Unprogramming series
Amy Koester of Show Me Librarian and I are tag-teaming at our blogs this week to report out the Chicago ALA Conversation Starter -Unprogramming: Recipes for School Age Success - that we led on Monday July 2 (see below for links to the whole series). Please join our continuing conversation in the comments or on Twitter by using the hashtag #unprogramming.What is it about unprogramming that we are so high on? One of the key pieces is that planning is greatly simplified - a matter of tagging ideas you read in blogs or hear from colleagues into a manila folder, Evernote, Pinterest or into whatever “possible ideas” bin you favor. Checking publisher and author sites, books in the collection and google results in possible activities. This very low-level on-going "aha!" planning lets staff address their other work without being overwhelmed as a program is decided upon and the date of the event approaches.Keeping the action within the program conversational and letting kids discover on their own contributes to the ease and simplified planning. By allowing kids more agency within the program, staff become free to guide rather than lead. One thing you quickly discover is how much kids enjoy the program when they have responsibility and freedom to direct their activities and make discoveries, talk about a book or author or the process they are going through. Worried about helping staff transition between over-planned programs and unprogramming? To create staff buy-in, encourage spending less time on preparation by connecting the budgetary dots: too much time spent prepping a stand-alone program isn’t financially worth it for the institution.
Consider partnering with an over-planner and modeling planning and doing a program together to show how preparation can be kept simple and the program rewarding. Goal setting with staffers can also be helpful. Challenge staffers to spend no more than 2 hours of prep per school-age program. Also encourage strategic thinking: if you spend money or time buying or creating a prop, where else can it be used.
The results are more mellow preparation, less emphasis on process and more on relaxed chatting and activities that relate directly to books.Stop by Amy's blog today to discover our Pinterest page full of programs and a real life example of how unprogramming works! Unprogramming series
Part 5 - Why It Works!
Part 6 -
Part 7 -
Part 8 -
