Teen Scavenger Hunt

The end of summer means another thank you party for the teen volunteers! They do so much good work for us that the staff always throws them an after-hours party complete with food, activities, and party favors. Allow me to present, a group picture of everyone who attended the party, which was about a third of our SRP volunteer class of 2019.

This year, I was in charge of running the party along with one of the building managers. I found an app called GooseChase that makes it incredibly easy to make scavenger hunts for groups and/or students, and they even have an educator option that lets you access much of the app's features for free! GooseChase let me create my hunt easily using the desktop computer, then let me password protect it so only our teens would have access. After everyone downloaded the app and signed in to our activity, they formed two- or three-person teams and ran off. One thing I would do differently if I do another teen scavenger hunt using digital devices is to add more challenges. Tonight's had twelve, and they were all back within 15 minutes!

Dinner was pizza and fruit, and the movie was the incomparable 1996 classic Matilda, but let's get to the real important part: the scavenger hunt. In my humble opinion, the best part of having teen programs after hours is the opportunity to run around and be loud in the stacks while there are no patrons there to complain. It's silly, fun, and lets the teens unwind in a casual environment after working hard for two months.

AWE Computers: Take a picture of you and/or a friend playing at the AWE computers in the Children's Room.

Books: See how many books you can balance in top of your head. Have a teammate take a picture before they fall!

Children's Room Colors: Find the wall in the Children's Room that you think has the best color, and take a picture in front of it.

First Time: Find an area in the library that you have never used (or haven't used a lot), and take a picture there.

Friends: Take a picture with someone who is NOT on your scavenger hunting team.

Furniture: Find your favorite piece of furniture in the library, and have someone take ap cture of you using it.

Mirror: Find a mirror somewhere in the library and take a mirror selfie. The more creative, the better!

Picture Book: Find a picture book you read as a kid, and take a picture with it.

Purple: Find a purple object and take a selfie with it.

Sorter: Take a group picture of your scavenger hunting team by the front check-in area and/or sorter.

Study Rooms: Take a picture inside one of the study rooms.

Tables: Take a picture under a table!

YAAS: Inaugural Meeting

The first-ever meeting of this program I've been planning for six months and talking up to anyone who will listen is FINALLY HERE!!! I am so excited, and so proud of myself for all the work I've done to make this program a reality. I was honestly surprised by how many people showed up. I would have considered six or seven participants a success, but we had a total of TWENTY-ONE! If you've ever sat in a room with cold pizza and a single volunteer, you know that number is basically unheard of for a teen program. Not only were participant numbers through the roof, about half of them were kids I've never met before. They weren't past or current volunteers, nor did I recognize them as library regulars. That means all the flyers I've been passing out and all the word-of-mouth advertising I've been doing WORKED!

If you'd like detailed info about what YAAS! is all about, you can refer to the What is YAAS? entry. It will hopefully answer most of your questions. If it doesn't, feel free to email me. My work email is all over the city on hundreds of flyers now, including the flyers on this blog, so it should be pretty easy to track down.

ANYWAY.

If you click this link, you can view my First Meeting PowerPoint in full. There are a few epic animated transitions that don't translate to that website, but all the info is still there. Here are screenshots of the more interesting slides in case you're not feeling up to opening a new tab and flipping through 12 slides right now.

Up as youth are walking in and getting oriented.
The intro and icebreaker questions are also listed for easy reference.

Important to explain what this group is
and why they should be excited about it.

Explanation of the four main programs we'll be exploring monthly.

Getting the youth involved in making the rules of the group
gives them a sense of ownership of the group. They'll keep coming back
if they were one of the original members and made these norms.

Is it even one of my programs if there's not a Broadway reference?

I feel it's important to give the youth ownership of their space.
If they make the rules, they're more likely to follow them.

Important to add that as group members change, the norms might also be amended.

Bribery always works

Since the above is basically an overview of our meeting, I'd like to share some pictures from the first meeting that show the plan in action!

The angle on the presentation photos is weird because I took them from a tiny, squishy chair very close to the ground.

The youth came up with a great list of group norms. Almost every person thought of one to contribute. While they took a break, my adult volunteer Sebastian and I went through the list and picked what we thought were the six most important ones to assign to the groups. Here's the list in full (norms they presented in blue):

• Write the book you're currently reading on your name tag each week
• Everyone tries to read weekly
• Communication among YAAS members - "don't yuck my yum"
• Actively participate
• Respect each other
• Have fun
• No swearing
• Always be respectful of other cultures
• Come to YAAS with a chill mindset
• Don't bring unnecessary drama to group
• Be on time
• Don't use your phone during YAAS
• Don't touch things that don't belong to you
• Okay to step outside if you need to
• Give a compliment to someone each week
• No throwing shade, and keep inside jokes to a minimum

After reading this list, how can anyone not love teens and young adults like I do?? They are so thoughtful and smart, and covered everything necessary to create a fun, safe, worry-free space every Tuesday evening. I couldn't have come up with a better list of norms myself.

If you viewed the full PowerPoint, you might have noticed there was a "Who Am I" activity listed. I was planning to do that activity, but we ran out of time just as the norm presentations were wrapping up. It was a bummer because it's a fun getting-to-know-you activity, but it might also make a good icebreaker to begin next week's meeting.

YAAS is off to a great start! I hope these participants continue to come, and that word spreads until we have a huge group of enthusiastic library youth!