Join the Storytime Underground!

I blogged recently about the terrific Guerrilla Storytimes that took place several afternoons at ALA. In case you were worried these Guerrilla Storytimes--this advocacy for youth librarians--might be an isolated occurrence, fear not. Because the Storytime Underground is live.

That's right, there's a whole website--nay, a whole community--dedicated to storytime guerrillas like you and the awesome work you do. The site went live last night, and Cory's opening post sets the tone perfectly. Go read it.

The whole point of the Storytime Underground is for youth librarians and their ilk to support each other, promote each other, and train each other. And to that end, I hope you'll get involved. That means making Guerrilla Storytimes happen at library events near you, and adding them to the Storytime Underground calendar. It means posing your storytime questions for the Ask a Storytime Ninja feature, and it means volunteering to be a storytime ninja because you have real expertise to share. Getting involved means sharing the great ideas you find online, be they your own or someone else's, so that the whole Storytime Underground community can benefit. It means sharing what you've learned through your library experience, and learning from the experience of your comrades. That's what the Storytime Underground can be.

So bookmark the site. Add it to your RSS feed. Join the Storytime Underground group on Facebook. Join us in this revolution.

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I would be remiss to not thank the talented collaborators who made the Storytime Underground site what it is, especially in such short time. So thanks, Cory, for brilliant ideas and inspiring speeches; thanks, Kendra, for setting the framework and sharing great content ideas; and thanks, Anna, for hooking the site up with an awesome header graphic. I salute you all.

Unprogramming, Part 8: The End

This post wraps it all up, folks. Over the last week, Marge Loch-Wouters and I have recapped our conversation starter from the 2013 ALA Annual Conference, and we hope that you've harvested some new unprogramming ideas and strategies along the way. The only things left for me to share are our presentation slides and the master list of recap posts.

I also want to say thanks to Marge before this post wraps up; I couldn't have asked for a wiser, more insightful, or more humorous co-presenter.

But this isn't really the end. The conversation about unprogramming isn't over. We hope you'll engage in the conversation on blogs, at conferences, and on Twitter using the hashtag #unprogramming. There are so many possibilities for unprogramming, and we cannot wait to see how you all make this strategy work for you. We'll chat.

Unprogramming: Recipes for School-Age Program Success from Amy Koester

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Recap Posts of Unprogramming: Recipes for School-Age Program Success

• Part 1: Programming Motivations & Pitfalls
• Part 2: What the Deuce Is It?
• Part 3: How to Unprogram & Free Yourself
• Part 4: The Recipe Revealed!
• Part 5: Why It Works!
• Part 6: A Collection of Unprograms & a Testimonial
• Part 7: Sharing the Goods
• Part 8: The End

Unprogramming, Part 6: A Collection of Unprograms & a Testimonial

All this week, Marge Loch-Wouters and I have been recapping our #ala2013 conversation starter on the topic of Unprogramming. Read all our previous posts & join in on the conversation in the comments or on Twitter (#unprogramming).

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So you've got the recipe for unprogramming. Maybe you'd like a few examples of unprograms, ready-to-go or ready-to-modify for your library. Well you are in luck, friend, because Marge and I have been pinning great examples of unprograms onto a board on Pinterest. Some of these pinned programs are our own, and we discussed a few of them in Chicago: a Superhero Party and Attack on the Fort! program from my library, and camp-out, Lego, and space adventures programs from Marge's library. Many of the pinned programs, though, are programs that we've culled from awesome librarians around the country and the blogosphere. And we're not done with this board, either; we're going to keep pinning examples of unprogramming that inspire us, and as a result we hope the Unprogramming Pinterest board will be a useful resource for you.

I also want to expand on Marge's post about why unprogramming works by sharing an anecdote--a testimonial, if you will:

My library has long had an American Girl Club program, and a few different staffers have been in charge of it over the years. This program has always required meticulous research, both of the characters and of the time period being explored. The staff member planning the program might spend several hours over the course of a month planning time period-appropriate games, crafts, and snacks. Attendance has always been good--around 35, which is on the large side for our location--but entirely female. The girls bring their American Girl dolls, and I've long been afraid we are excluding those who don't have a doll even though we advertise the program as open to everyone.

Cut to this spring, when a staff member gave unprogramming a shot. She created a write-up for a Marble Run Mania program, which required collecting a bunch of recyclable materials, some electrical tape, and marbles. Prep time was 20 minutes of program room setup. The program opened with brief discussion of ways to think about building structures; kids had access to books on engineering/building (think David Macaulay). This staff person also used kids' input to make a brief bulleted list of design ideas. Kids then broke into groups to create whatever type of marble run they wanted. The last 10 minutes of the program were open for trying each others' marble runs. Attendance was 57, diverse in age, boys and girls, and the kids were crazy engaged. They loved it. So much less prep time, so much more engagement.

So there you have it, the crux of the reason I am a big believer in unprogramming in the library for school-age kids: high engagement, minimal staff overload. I hope I'm not the only librarian to experience this change. I'd love to hear stories from you about what happened when you tried an unprogram.

Join Marge and me tomorrow for the final posts in our Unprogramming wrap-up! Thanks for hanging with us this long.

Unprogramming, Part 3: How to Unprogram & Free Yourself

Marge Loch-Wouters and I are recapping our 2013 ALA Annual Convention Conversation Starter on Unprogramming in a series of posts. To get caught up, start with posts one and two. Join our ongoing conversation on the topic of Unprogramming by sounding off in the comments or taking to Twitter (don't forget the hashtag #unprogramming).

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So you've decided, now that you know what unprogramming is, that you want to unprogram at your library. Where do you begin?

Start by asking yourself one big question: "How does what I'm doing/what I want to do connect kids to a) a book or books; b) an author or illustrator; c) the library or our services; and/or d) some aspect of kids' interests that can connect back to the library?" The question seems like a mouthful, but it's pretty straightforward and extremely open-ended. Asking this question from the get-go ensures that your unprograms will connect back to your library's goals and mission; it necessitates that you think about books, reading, the library, literacy, etc., from the very beginning stages of planning. Never again will you have to worry that your program doesn't connect to the library.

Thinking broadly by asking yourself this question informs your choices for programs and activities. For example, do you want to offer a program in which kids can gain a sense of comfort and agency at the library? LEGO Club, craft programs, and "instant artist" tables can allow you to accomplish this goal simply. If you're looking to connect more to reading and literacy, think about the myriad ways to incorporate books into a program: book talks; book trailers; talking about authors and illustrators and their styles and processes; facilitating a discussion where kids share what they've been reading. All are viable options for connecting programs to literacy in an engaging way.

What you'll find when you start to unprogram--in addition to freeing yourself from worry about programs connecting to library goals--is that children who attend the programs show up because they are interested in books as well as the topic you've chosen for the program. Incorporating book elements into an otherwise activity-laden program only adds to their interest and engagement by highlighting a topic they care about. Unprogramming is taking kids seriously in a forum that is important to them.

Tomorrow, Marge will share her official recipe for unprogramming.

Unprogramming, Part I: Programming Motivations & Pitfalls

On the Monday of the 2013 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, Marge Loch-Wouters and I led a conversation starter on the topic of Unprogramming: Recipes for School-Age Program Success. We had a number of requests to put our content online, and we will be doing so in installments over the course of this week. Chime in with your own unprogramming ideas and stories in the comments or on Twitter using the hashtag #unprogramming.

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Programming. We all do it: planning what we'll do, gathering our materials, promoting the event to library families, and hosting the program on our specified day and time. Most of us got our chops planning story times for preschoolers. Preschool story time is a highly choreographed affair, with specifically-chosen stories, rhymes, and fingerplays that blend together to become more than the sum of their parts. Preschool programming also involves engaging caregivers in a way that influences them to facilitate their children's literacy development outside of the program room. Sure, preschool story time requires a degree of flexibility in content to account for the attention spans' of the audience; but that's flexibility with oodles of planned materials. Preschool programming takes a lot of planning.

But what about school-age programming, the older cousin of preschool programming? What's going on there?

Libraries have many various motivations for offering programming for their school-age customers:

• We want to draw people into our buildings
• We want to provide entertainment
• We want to highlight our library collections
• We want to increase use and circulation of our materials
• We want to support literacy in every form
• We want to allow children to try new things and develop their own interests
• We want to engage larger, more diverse audiences of community members

As much as we may want to jump full into school-age programming, we as librarians acknowledge that programming pitfalls do exist:

• Program fatigue is a thing, and librarians can find themselves burnt out by offering too many high-intensity programs
• Planning time takes over other duties
• Many programs cost money, and budgets may or may not support program costs
• You never know just how many kids will participate
• Kids who have attended past programs have appeared bored
• Staff aren't very interested or invested in offering interesting programming for school-agers

And yet, despite these potential pitfalls, we continue to program for school-agers, as we should. But, *EUREKA!*, programming for school-age children does not need to be a time-consuming, exhaustively-planned affair fraught with worry and burnout. On the contrary, librarians can unprogram for school-age children.

Tomorrow, Marge will share the concept of "unprogramming" and what it is.

STEM Storytime Extenders: A conversation with the Preschool Services Discussion Group at #ala2013

When Sue McCleaf Nespeca asked me to lead a conversation on STEM in storytime for the Preschool Services Discussion Group at ALA Annual in Chicago, I knew I wanted to accomplish two things: 1) I wanted to share the diversity of options libraries have when it comes to incorporating STEM into preschool services, from small modifications of existing programs to creation of new programs; and 2) I wanted to leave ample opportunity for open discussion and idea-sharing.

Now that this discussion has taken place, I am going to assert that I thought the whole thing successful. I left with many new ideas from colleagues across the country, and to me, that's the sign of a great program or conversation--I leave with concrete takeaways. The group discussion offered a number of terrific ideas and resources:

• Looking for a play-based program model with great STEM potential? Look to the MAP program--for Messy Active Play--at the Suffolk County Libraries on Long Island.
• Want to partner with organizations or get grand funding for STEM activities? Suggestions shared include making contact with your state's agricultural school extension and seeking grant funding for gardening through Katie's Krops.
• Curious about some go-to resources for planning or storytime sharing? Attendees shared a number of titles and publishers:
• The Loopy Coop Hens: Letting Go
• titles by Steven Jenkins
• titles from Pebble Books
• titles from Peachtree Publishers
• Spotlight on Young Children guides from NAEYC
• What about options for passive STEM programming? Participants shared two stellar ideas that I hadn't thought to mention, although my library does them:
• STEM Observation Stations -- get an ant farm, worm farm, root farm, butterfly garden, terrarium, plant of some kind, carnation in colored water, etc., and let kids observe it and how it changes whenever they're in the library
• Take-Home Story Time Kits on STEM themes -- make it easy for caregivers to pick up a pre-bundled set of materials on a STEM topic; details on how my library does these kits here

Many discussion group attendees also raved about the previous day's program, "What's Hot in STEAM Education: How Using ECRR2 Supports Literacy, Common Core and School Success." I was bummed to have to miss the program due to a meeting conflict, but I was happy to hear all program materials will be shared on the ECRR Ning. Hooray for sharing resources!

I'll finish off this recap post with my slides, which go with the handout I had for the discussion group meeting. If you have any questions at all, about this particular discussion or STEM/STEAM in general, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas and expertise with the group in Chicago.

STEM Storytime Extenders from Amy Koester

Guerrilla Storytime: Ideas & Advocacy at #ala2013

In the lead-up to the 2013 ALA Annual Conference, you may have heard rumblings about Guerrilla Storytime. The pre-Chicago online chatter about the informal movement resulted in a great crowd of attendees in the Uncommons for the advertised Friday and Saturday storytimes. That stellar attendance (upwards of 75 folks dropped by and/or participated each of those days!) led Guerrilla Storytime idea-genius Cory Eckert to stage a completely impromptu edition on the Monday afternoon of the conference, too.

But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

Cory Eckert, the idea-genius I just mentioned, is the youth services manager at the Octavia Fellin Public Library in Gallup, New Mexico. Back in March, Eckert took to Twitter with an idea for storytime skills building and advocacy among the larger librarian population. Why not stage pop-up storytimes at a major library conference like ALA Annual? Such an event would allow youth services librarians to share their expertise and learn from their peers, and the fact that other non-YS librarians would be able to see the activity in the public space would foster awareness that storytime is so much more than just reading books to kids. Anna Haase Krueger of Future Librarian Superhero created a Google Group to allow interested librarians to continue the conversation in depth, and shortly after the term "Guerrilla Storytime" was chosen as the name for the project.

Cut to last Friday in Chicago. At 3 p.m., a group of children's librarians entered the Uncommons as planned. Then more and more people started to join as Guerrilla Storytime got underway. The beginning premise was straightforward: participant volunteers would select a storytime challenge from the Challenge Cup, then respond to that challenge using their own knowledge or by asking the audience for assistance. Challenges were brainstormed by Eckert, Melissa Depper of the blog Mel's Desk (and 2013 Mover & Shaker!), and myself, and they included such topics as incorporating early literacy skills and practices into storytime, favorite and go-to rhymes and songs, and strategies for responding to storytime problems (moms talking in the back, we're talking about you).

Guerrilla Storytime Challenge Cups can all look different.

On Friday, Guerrilla Storytime started with a few brave souls getting the energy pumping. After the initial few challenge-seekers, more and more attendees opted to try their hands at storytime skills and share ideas with their colleagues.

My favorite takeaways from Friday (a limited list, to be sure, because I couldn't type all the great ideas into my phone quickly enough!):

• What do you do when the moms in the back won't stop talking? Cate's strategy is to stop talking, or whatever activity she is doing at the front of the room. If the obvious pause in storytime doesn't stop the chatter, then Cate will start to make silly faces. Of course the kids notice, and of course they start to make silly faces back. Suddenly, in the unexpected quiet and barrage of goofy faces, offending talkers usually get the picture.



Trying out some favorite parachute songs.

• Favorite parachute song? Kendra grabbed the parachute that Katie generously brought to the convention center, and a small army of storytime guerrillas jumped up to play along. Kendra's favorite song to share during parachute play time--especially with toddlers and younger preschoolers--is "These Are the Colors Over You," a simple song about the colors on the parachute set to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle." As you can imagine, a singalong ensued.
• How do you incorporate letter knowledge into storytime? Instead of creating an entire storytime around a single letter, a storytime guerrilla says that she'll tell her kiddos their "letter of the day;" whenever the group might encounter that letter during storytime, everyone makes note of it together. We all know how much kids love seek-and-find activities, and this strategy emphasizes letter recognition without derailing your storytime theme.
• Your kids have the wiggles! What do you do? Rick got the whole group standing to participate in his go-to wiggles-be-gone trick: the chant "Form the Orange." This one is solid gold.
• What do you do when your storytime crowd has grown too large, but your supervisor doesn't see that as a problem? A few voices chimed in here with some great ideas. One, have a discussion with said supervisor about the goals of storytime; this discussion can allow you to voice concerns about meeting specific goals in a too-crowded room. Second, invite said supervisor to storytime. Sometimes, it takes the visual of seeing kids unable to adequately participate due to group size to impress the notion that program size matters.
• Favorite cumulative stories? There Was a Tree, The Great Big Turnip, This is the Jacket I Wear in the Snow, and I Ain't Gonna Paint No More (for which Cate dons a painter's full-body smock and lets kids paint her!).
• Favorite shaker song? Mel got in front of the group to lead a rousing rendition of "We're Going to Kentucky."
• How do you incorporate vocabulary into storytime? Katie shared her modification of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," which she uses to talk about size words and family words. Katie starts with the familiar Itsy Bitsy spider, who is then accompanied by his younger sister, Eensy Weensy, and his older brother, Big Giant spider.

Mel has shared her takeaways from the Saturday Guerrilla Storytime on her blog.

Guerrilla Storytime on the Front Porch Stage

Then, on Monday, after the exhibits hall had closed and not too many folks were left in the conference center, Cory Eckert called for an impromptu Guerrilla Storytime. A group of librarians, some of them youth services folks but many not, were gathered around the Front Porch Stage, a small stage front in the atrium of the convention center. Many new participants shared their expertise there, including some absolute gems that I cannot wait to incorporate back at my library:

• Favorite fingerplay? Marge shared a rendition of "Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree" that uses sign language as the finger playing; when she shares the fingerplay in storytime, she always does the last verse ("One little monkey...") silently, everyone using just their hands. Then Julie shared her delightful "Five Little Hotdogs"--a bit of fun absurdity to add to storytime.
• Best books for incorporating narrative skills? Monkey & Me; Oh, No!; and Animal Masquerade were highly-recommended titles.
• Best practices for incorporating books with foreign words? Make laminated pictures of the unfamiliar words, then use the pictures as references whenever the word appears in the story. Before you know it, "gato" will so obviously mean "cat" to your storytime audience.

Was Guerrilla Storytime successful? As a storytime provider who left with lots of new ideas, I would say so undoubtedly. What about from an advocacy perspective? After Friday's Guerrilla Storytime, an adult services public librarian came up to me in the Uncommons and said how much he enjoyed seeing all of the different things that can happen in the storytime room. After the Monday edition, Steve Thomas interviewed Eckert about the Guerrilla Storytime project for his library podcast, Circulating Ideas. Guerrilla Storytime appears to have begun to reach even a small group of non-YS librarians with information about what storytime really entails (and how knowledgeable, how expert, storytime librarians are).

The best news: Guerrilla Storytime has every appearance of becoming a regular conference activity, albeit one that remains a bit off the grid. If you weren't able to take in Guerrilla Storytime in Chicago this past week, just look for Guerrilla Storytimes happening at future conferences like Midwinter, ALA Annual in Las Vegas, and perhaps even PLA and the ALSC Institute. In the meantime, share your favorite storytime skills and conference storytime takeaways on Twitter using #guerrillastorytime. There is so much we can learn from one another while advocating for the extremely important work that librarians do in storytime.