YSS Webinar - Teen Volunteers and TAG

WLA’s Youth Services Section Presents:

Growing Community Leaders through Teen Advisory Groups and Volunteering

Talking with teens, hearing their opinions, and watching them grow can be one of the most rewarding experiences. But it can sometimes be difficult to harness that teenage energy into an experience that works to give them some ownership of what happens in the library. Join four librarians who have successfully wrangled their teens into either advisory boards or volunteers, which in turn has resulted in amazing things like a teen created podcast and teen representation at library board meetings.  They’ll share ideas on how to recruit, balance the workload, and keep things organized.

Speakers:

Valerie Spooner has been the Youth Services Librarian at the Rusk County Community Library in Ladysmith since 2014. She is a department of one and does everything from collection development to programming and everything in between. When she started working at the library, she was kind of afraid of teens and now teen events are one of her favorite things to do.

Caitlin Schaffer is the Youth Services Librarian at the Oconomowoc Public Library. She is in charge of all services for ages 0-18, but has a particular passion for serving teens. Her teen volunteers describe her as clever, empathetic, enthusiastic, artful, relatable, and creative, but mostly she's just busy. 

Taylor Wilcox works as the Teen Librarian at the Waupaca Public Library. In 2021 she and her teens at the time rebranded their library's old teen volunteer group. As a result, they gained a huge upswing in participation and community involvement. It's Taylor's hope to give teens in her community a chance to grow as leaders and offer them leadership opportunities through their time spent as library volunteers.

Emily Sanders is the Assistant Director/Youth Services Librarian at Barrett Memorial Library in Williams Bay. If she's not struggling with a knitting project, she's got her nose in a book. She is passionate about finding new ways that the library can provide exciting experiences to her community and loves talking about all things library!