Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus Party

This spring, the team decided it was high time to hold a party for our 1000 Books Before K Club kids. We thought: May, nice weather, a bus or historic trolley - PIGEON!!! Thus was the pigeon party born.

We offer one-two events per year for our 1000 Books families.  We often hold them before or after hours so the tots and parents get exclusive use of our space and non-stop attention from staff.  We might have a concert, or a cookie party with Laura Numeroff's Mouse, or mac and cheese and a chance to browse the room. We posted about last fall's Brown Bear event here. Whatever we focus on we make sure to invite our 1000 Books families and let them know something special is about to happen for them.

As a fan of book-based parties, a Pigeon Party based on Mo Willems' books, didn't disappoint. We booked our historic trolley to do a 20 minute drive around our riverfront downtown. We left enough time to do three runs so we could accommodate any sized crowd. Two runs did nicely.

   

One team member, Sherri, welcomed the kids to the trolley with a pigeon stuffed toy and rode along with the families on the trolley. Another team member, Brooke,  had mounted pigeon cards on craft sticks for the kids to hold;  they received these before they got on the trolley. Kids used the card to wave and shout an emphatic "NO!!" when Sherri asked them if the pigeon should drive the bus. 

Brooke also had stories, a small activity - decorate a bus that Pigeon might ride on - and even used the "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" app with kids one-on-one. We also invited our families to meet staff after the party at the local downtown ice cream parlor and a few families took us up on the idea to visit together outside the library.

A bus can work just as well as a trolley for a program like this.  Parents and kids were excited and staff felt like the planning was just perfect to celebrate a much-loved book with our 1000 Book families!

Unprogram Your Programs

Sometimes it seems like programs are planned to a fare-thee-well. Massive amounts of time, sweat, money, prep and pain go into what is essentially a 45 minute adventure with kids.  If you have a massive turn-out (The room is full! The self-check-outs are swamped! The staff is scrambling!), that kind of preparation and staff time commitment seems to be worth the investment. Then again, if you get a small turn-out, is all the prep worth it?

I've thought alot about this issue over the years. This post was sparked by my friend Georgia's post over at Come into Delight, many of the program ideas from Amy over at Show Me Librarian and watching the work of my colleague Sara, someone new to librarianship discovering the wonders of "stuff" readily available in our basement storage area and putting together programs with some thought and what amounts to a couple of bobby pins and scotch tape.

I wonder sometimes if over-preparation for programs happens because of pure dog fear - what if we don't fill up the time or the kids are bored? While it's realistic to have concerns about how substantive the content of an hour-long program is, planning so much "stuff" for kids that it would take three hours to do them all, simply isn't.  Accepting that the program may end a little early is fine - and so is giving kids enough time to explore or experience each part of a program without rushing them from activity to activity.

It's hard for me to justify spending more staff time in planning and preparation for an actual event than the amount of time the event actually lasts. Ten hours of staff time for discussion, planning and preparation for a program is nine hours too many. I'm not being lazy here or uncaring. But I wonder if over-preparing for an event isn't a bit of a waste of time? I think balance is important.  And fun is important. So it leads me to thinking of programs as un-programs so we can do them and still make time to be creative in other ways in our youth work (tackling change in collections, directions, and pushing the envelope on service).

I like to see programs that can be useful whether 10 kids or 110 kids show up. If time is spent making or buying a special prop, I like to see it used numerous times in numerous ways for numerous programs.  Since numbers on the low side are more realistic at the libraries I work at, these things are especially important.

To unprogram programs, I stop and ask, "How does what I'm doing connect kids to a book or books; an author or illustrator; the library or our services or some aspect of kids' interests that relate back to the library?" I just can't do something that doesn't have that connection. But more than that, is what I'm doing and choosing relevant to kids right now - not 20 years ago; not 10 years ago; not 5 years ago - but right now with my community of kids right here? It's way easy to make the mistake of thinking because a program once worked, it's time to trot it out again. S. Bryce Kozla has a great post on how she addresses the issue of what kids currently respond to.

Thinking about this informs the choices for programs and activities. It may be letting the kids free play or explore activities on their own with gentle guidance from us. If it's not a DIY craft or activity event, I think about how I want to incorporate books into the program - booktalking, talking about the book creator or their art or writing style or life or what people are talking about in relation to them, or starting a conversation with the kids and letting them talk about the books and reading - stuff that unlocks the books for the kids and gets them excited about the material. It's like extending and enriching the story.

Most kids are using the library and coming to programs because they like reading or books or our materials or us in some way.  So rather than  ignoring that aspect I look for ways to celebrate it in fun and creative ways. The result is a relaxed preparation, less emphasis on crafting and more on chatting and activities that tie directly into books or the library. Kids like it. Boom! Unprogrammed!

I hope to explore the concept of unprogramming and playing with programs a few more times in coming months (this is my first stab; I've been noodling at it for awhile which clearly accounts for its wandering nature). I am in good company with more and more bloggers sharing not just program content but their thinking beyond what they do - seems like there's plenty to talk about!

I Want to Tell You a Story

We have a favorite partnership in our community. It's with our La Crosse Storyelling Festival.  As part of my job, I represent the library on the planning committee for this annual festival, held the first weekend after Labor Day for over 800 avid storytelling fans. The festival features tellers from our local guild, from the state and national tellers.

The library began as a partner years ago by sponsoring children's crafts during breaks in the children's tent storytelling. When I started work at the library four years ago, the fest steering committee asked me to serve on their board - they are all storytelling colleagues that I had known for years in my storytelling circles. Our library wants library staff to serve, on library time, on local organizations and boards (Rotary, Jaycees, Optimists, Earth Day planning committee) so this fit right in with the library goals. And it was storytelling. As a free lance storyteller, it was a great fit!

As a board member, I've been able to work on behalf of the festival - but also on the library's behalf.  I look for ways to make our contribution meaningful and to highlight the library beyond having our logo displayed. The library now co-sponsors the Friday night spooky tales. I host the evening as the "Wizard of Reading" and get to plug the library and reading.  Anyone who shows their library card gets $3 off their admission. The library, pays the difference - we consider it part of our programming.

The Saturday craft area that we sponsor has mellowed into an activity area with one or two book-related activities (bookmark making, writing or drawing activities) and a space for reading and books.  I also do storytelling in the children's tent off and on during the afternoon. It's also a great chance to spend time with folks who are regular library users, chatting about their thoughts on the library;  promote our services to non- and new- users and be there for support of literacy through storytelling.

So the twelve and fourteen hour days I work at the festival are about as fun as they can be for work hours. And the partnership between storytelling and the library...well, it's perfect.

Ahhhh - Ology Program

I don't give enough props to the fun stuff our newest Department member Sara B. comes up with. Let me correct that.

Her newest idea was to hatch an afterschool series based on the wildly popular -ology series (Dragonology, Spyology, Wizardology, etc). Drop by her lively blog S. Bryce Kozla for a report of the first successful session.

A Program is a Program is a Program?

If you work with kids, you know that creating, planning, booking and doing programs takes a chunk of our work life. Because it is such an uber-part of our time, I can't help thinking about it and asking why it is we do what we do. Why, really, do we program? Is it to entertain?  Is it to educate? Is it to get people to the library?

I'm pretty old school about it.  For me, we create programs at the library to draw people into our buildings, to create a pleasant library experience and to highlight our collections, increase check-out and support literacy. Thinking about programs this way helps me plan realistically, create breaks for patrons and staff rather than program year-round and helps focus our energy. If programs are doing what they should, our usage and circulation should be directly affected in a positive way.

I like programs that relate to books and literacy and our collection (storytimes and book parties, I heart you). I like programs that piggyback onto pop culture interests of kids and debuting media that allows us to ride a popularity wave while relating back to our books and collections. I am less impressed with clowns, magicians and other performers that our community kids can see any and everywhere around here. I'm not saying we never book them, but I always wonder how it relates to what we are doing in a larger sense. 

I've also been thinking alot lately about the non-traditional program initiatives we're involved in and we've read about at other libraries  - 1000 Books Before Kindergarten, Summer Library Programs (yep, we all do SLP's but do we realize they are "programs" in and of themselves?) Story Action Pods, Free-quent Reader Club, Between-Storytime Coupon Books,Winter Reading programs, etc.  These initiatives are often run over a long period of time and fit all my definitions of programs listed above. What is their place in our program sphere?

Every time we plan and create one of these initiatives, we see people flocking in, circ increasing and interest in books and literacy skyrocket.  Yet we don't necessarily "see" them as programs or count them as programs in terms of attendance.  I think that's a mistake.

What I love about the above initiatives is that beyond the initial planning and very minimal daily administration, they take little staff time. They allow much greater staff-child interaction in the most pleasant way than almost all our traditional programs ("Wow, look at all the books you listened to!"; "Which one of these activities did you enjoy most this week?"; "What's going on in this picture?").  Much of the interaction leads to conversations about reading and books that are fundamentally important in creating a feeling of comfort and worth for these kids.

Yet, we barely count them as programs and the statistics are almost hidden.  We know and report how many kids sign-up for Summer Reading Program - but if we looked at participation (how many times did kids return to the library) - an initial participation rate of 521 kids skyrockets to over 2,000 return visits made to the library by these readers.  But that is usually a lost statistic.  Same for 1000 Books Before Kindergarten Club.  400 kids are being read to but we've had over 1,100 return visits to the library.

These initiatives - passive programs in a way or value-added programs in another light, or perhaps, best of all, stealth programs! - create just as much, and often more, response and participation than our traditional programs. We find ourselves in times of shrinking budgets turning more towards them. Since our state required program statistics only recognize traditional programming stats, we are discussing at our library how to recognize the importance of these unreported statistics that correlate to huge circulation increases and much busier Children's area.

We think they are programs.  How about you?



Image: 'Juggler'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/69444890@N00/404640681