A+ Partnership for Service to South Jersey Teens

-- Strong teens contribute to a strong community --

 

What is it?  A+ is a partnership between public and school librarians, parents, teachers, guidance counselors, the entire youth serving community and – most especially -- teens themselves to: 

 

• Improve the quality of life and safe educational experience of South Jersey teens
• Increase effectiveness of support services for teens through shared services among public and school libraries and other agencies in the local youth serving community
• Harness the volunteer power of teens in the school, library and community. 

 

What are some school and public libraries already accomplishing?  An exciting new landscape for services to and from teens including: 

Harnessing the Power of Teen volunteers:

• Helping the library with programs, technology and story hours.
• Being “Reading Buddies” to younger kids.
• Serving on Teen Advisory Boards.
• Tutoring other teens and mentoring “tweens.”

   

Linking Teens to community service:   

• Mentoring seniors in technology.
• Making quilts for hospitalized children.
• Preparing meals for homeless shelters.

Proving a seamless educational experience… as school and public libraries collaborate on:

• Classroom visits as a team.
• Book clubs and Summer reading lists.
• Joint presentations for parents at Back-to-School and College Nights.
• Library card sign-up.
• Outreach programs to at-risk teens and special needs populations.

 

But we could be doing so much more… To make every public and school library:

• a full service resource for our teens.
• a cost-saving and effective collaborator with youth serving community.
• a link to volunteer opportunities for teens and potential volunteers for the community.

 

What are our next steps?

 

Strategies

 

School and public librarians serving overlapping teen populations will have an ongoing working relationship and engage in an ongoing dialogue that includes:

 

• Regularly scheduled public librarian visits to schools for collaborative efforts with school media specialists (book talks, college prep, library card promotion, etc.)
• School media specialists and public librarians proactively communicating with each other to promote public library events, develop reading lists, etc.
• School media specialists and public librarians working proactively to share information on and develop volunteer opportunities for teens in the library and the community (e.g. assisting seniors with technology) including use of public library space for applicable volunteer activities after school hours.

 

 

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