Teens at the Normal Public Library learn how to cook Southwest staples, from flickr
Last week I attended the webinar Teaming Up with Teens @ Your Library, presented by Diane Tuccillo and Kelly Johnson. The webinar was sponsored by Web Junction and YALSA, and Diane and Kelly presented some terrific ideas!
You can view the archived webinar and see resource lists yourself at your convenience. Definitely worth an hour. The chat logs themselves are full of amazing ideas and sharing between librarians.
One of the great things they talked about was the need to make sure that if you have a Teen Advisory Board (or whatever you want to call it), you need to make sure your meetings are fun, expect teens to be teens, and build community within the group. One way of doing that (aside from serving food, which every single teen librarian I’ve ever heard speak insists is crucial) is to pick a few ice breaker games to play at your meetings before getting down to business. Diane Tuccillo listed a few great sources for these games on her resource list:
http://www.ydnetwork.org/Icebreakers
https://www.ultimatecampresource.com/camp-activities/ice-breakers/
http://www.cplrmh.com/icebreakers.html
What is your favorite thing to do with teens? (yes, I mean you!)