Austin writes: "In late 2021 we started to see some real challenges with how our teens and our non-teen-staff were interacting. The massive amount of unfocused energy our middle schoolers especially bring into the library space and the larger clumps they tend to travel in on Fridays were intimidating to some of our staff, and even in the Teen Center there were behavior struggles. We were also fighting a losing battle against the remnants of straws, Takis bags, and anything else they could get their hands on to destroy while they were hanging out from becoming Teen Center decor. Despite our best efforts, monitoring clean-up for waves of middle schoolers coming and going from a room full of at least forty of them at a time with that much unstructured energy was not feasible – banning food and drinks long term isn’t an option for us either."
The solutions - genius! They can be easily adopted at any library. Stop here to read about how they made lemonade out of lemons with their unfocused teens. [Programming with Constructive Destruction. Ferraro, Austin. Teen Librarian Toolbox. School Library Journal. March 17, 2022]
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