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Designing the Program

Once you have chosen the model of community service that will work best in your library, it is time to design your specific program.

Tasks for teen volunteers

When deciding on your list of tasks it is important to:

• include a variety of tasks for the teens to carry out to accommodate people with different personalities and skills sets. For example, some teens might prefer to interact regularly with library customers, others might prefer working on their own; some teens will be good at designing artwork, others will be better at working with children;
• always make sure that there are enough tasks for the teens to carry out - it does not take teens long to become bored and restless when there's nothing to do;
• give the teens as much responsibility as you can to provide them with as interesting, fulfilling and rewarding an experience as possible.

It is also a good idea to design tasks and activities that will contribute to the continuation of the program. For example, the teens can be taught how to train other teens; they can devise training and instructional materials for future participants, and they can be encouraged to organize fundraisers, such as used-book drives, to raise money to fund their other activities such as the production of a library newsletter.

Also think about the skills and interests volunteers might need to carry out the tasks. When you are selecting volunteers you will be more likely to recruit teens for positions to which they are most suited and the work they do will be more valuable for them and for the library.

Training

Consider what kinds of training sessions you will provide. Who will carry out the training sessions and what form will they take? Although it is probably most efficient to carry out one group training session, at least initially, teens are often very busy and might not all be able to attend at the same time. In addition, it might be appropriate to carry out follow-up training sessions for smaller groups or individuals. See the later section, "Training Teens," for more information on training teen volunteers.

Supervision and evaluation

It is important to decide who will be responsible for supervising the teen volunteer and to devise a clear and efficient means by which both library staff and teens can evaluate the program. It can be a good idea to arrange to have meetings with the teens, either individually or as a group, where the program can be discussed.

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Working with schools

Your local middle schools and high schools will be important partners in implementing the program. The schools will be your primary venue for recruiting teens, so it is important to establish contact with them early in the program.

Start with the principal of the school. You may already have a relationship with the principal because of previous contacts or cooperative ventures. If not, call and introduce yourself. Make an appointment to talk to the principal about the community service program. Bring any fact sheets or promotional materials that you may have developed. Explain that you are trying to develop the job skills identified by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS).

Ask if the school has a community service requirement. If it does, find out who is responsible for implementing it. This person will probably be your primary point of contact. It may be a guidance counselor or the teacher in one of the basic life skills classes. Learn what the school's requirements for community service are, and explain your program thoroughly so the contact person can refer appropriate students to you.

If the school has a register of approved community service work sites, ask to have your library's program included. If the school is not this well-organized, ask if you can publicize your program there anyway. Talk about the best way to do this at that particular school. Teens have told us that giving brochures or information to teachers is not a good way to get the word out, incidentally. After your program is established, the teen volunteers themselves can do much of the recruitment at the school.

Schools without formal community service programs may still be interested in working with you. You will need to be flexible about finding the right people within the school to be your contacts. Maintain your contact with the school after the initial recruitment effort. Let the school know how many students are working with you. Send them a letter telling them which students have completed their community service hours.

You will find that establishing this kind of close working relationship or cooperative connection with your local schools will bring other benefits as well. The school will see the library as another community agency that is dedicated to providing informal educational opportunities for their students. Other opportunities for positive collaboration are certain to result.

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Implementing the Program

Recruiting teens

It is important to publicize your teen volunteer program to teens and adults in your local community.

• Talk to your advisory board about good ways to advertise the program. In particular, teens can be helpful in suggesting ways to market the program to other teens;
• Try to achieve face-to-face contact with as many teens as possible;
• Assure the teens that they will receive training;
• Try to build up a personal relationship with local teachers so that they will make your program one of their priorities;
• Give teachers and other community members clear, concise and comprehensive information about the project.

You will need to develop a number of publicity materials - for example, you might want to design a logo, and create posters, brochures and flyers to distribute to teens and adults. All publicity materials should be eye-catching and represent clearly the nature of the program.

If the publicity materials are official publications of the library system, it is important that they look professional. Teens are used to being bombarded with slick marketing images and will respond to equally slick library materials. The logo and the brochures developed by the County of Los Angeles Public Library can be found in appendices B, C, and D. At CoLAPL, the slogan for the program is Teens Reaching Out; on the logo, this slogan is combined with an image of active teens.

Your publicity materials can also be designed in-house at the library. If you choose this option, it is a good idea to design fun materials that might have been created by teens, or to ask some teens to design them for you. See appendices E and F for some flyers that were developed by individual libraries. As you can see from the flyer that was used to recruit Teen Technology Task Force members, if your program requires that the participants already possess certain skills, you can specify these requirements from the beginning.

When designing any publicity materials, it is important to ask teens for design ideas and advice. Teens are the best source of information about what will appeal to other teens.

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The Application Process

It can be a good idea to ask teens to complete an application form (in addition to the paperwork that might also be required of any volunteers by your library system) and be interviewed by library staff. See Appendix I for the volunteer handbook used at the County of Los Angeles Public Library.

Application forms or interviews will be particularly important if your program relies on including teens with a certain skill level or if you need to restrict the number of teen volunteers in the program at one time. In addition, finding out some information about the teens through the forms or the interviews will also help you to match the right teen to the right job.

Do not be afraid to restrict the number of teens participating in the volunteer program. If you include more than a manageable number of teens, the program will become unwieldy and will not be enjoyable or rewarding for the library or the teens.

Included below is an example of an application form and an example of interview questions for potential Teen Technology Task Force members.

Application Form for Teen Technology Task Force Member Interview Questions for Teen Technology Task Force

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Training teens

The training sessions are a good place to start building a good relationship between you and your teen volunteers. Try to get to know your volunteers: remember their names, ask them about themselves, and tell them something about yourself. If you are doing one-on-one training, be sure to explain that the teen is being trained to do their job.

Content

During the training sessions it is important to give the teens an orientation to the library. Provide them with information about the library and how it works. This information will give the volunteers a context for the work they are doing and will help them to feel more comfortable in the library environment.

• Describe to the teens the purpose of their particular role and why it is important to the library. Tell them about the benefits that volunteers bring to the library in general; the importance of their particular role to the library; and the way in which their role contributes to the operation of the library as a whole.
• Discuss the benefits the teens will get from volunteering. Tell them about the skills they will acquire and develop and the opportunities the library can provide for them.
• Inform the teens clearly about the tasks they will be carrying out and what is expected of them.
• Tell them who their supervisor will be and provide contact details for this person.
• Tell the teens how the program will be appraised and evaluated by you and by them.
• Discuss the time commitment you would like from them.

To help avoid later confusion and allay future problems, make sure that any rules and regulations you will be expecting your volunteers to comply with are clarified during the training sessions. This way, everyone is clear from the beginning what will be expected of the volunteers.

Style

• To get the best response from your teens during the training session, make these sessions interactive and conversational and not too much like school.
• Provide a relaxed environment in which teens will feel comfortable asking questions about the library and the volunteer experience.
• Teens respond very well to humor, so, if you feel comfortable with this, try humor. However, don't try too hard to be cool because, to them, you won't be...
• Don't rely too much on handouts that probably won't be read.

Ongoing training

As the program progresses, introduce and use peer-training. Teens respond well to being trained by their peers ­ people who understand about being a teen and how they perceive and understand situations. Ensure that your teen-trainers have been trained how to train others. Once instituted, peer-training is can be an efficient way to continue the program.

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Working with Teens: The teen volunteer-friendly library

Teen volunteer programs work best in teen-friendly libraries. The most successful programs, for the teens and the library, are ones where all members of library staff feel happy and comfortable working alongside teen volunteers. These programs enable the teens to form good relationships, develop relevant skills, feel that they are contributing to the community, and feel competent and confident.

Successful programs will provide a variety of opportunities for teen volunteers. They will be fluid, flexible, interesting programs that support the talents and personalities of a variety of teens and that provide these teens with a number of relevant life skills

Teens who have a good experience volunteering at the library are likely to return as regular library customers when their community service period is over.

Make sure the volunteers have a sense of ownership over the volunteer program:

• tell the volunteers that this is their program;
• give your volunteers the support (e.g. moral support as well as space, room, resources) they need to carry out the program, and then allow them do the maximum amount of work possible to keep the program going. This will give them a sense of responsibility, and will save on staff time;
• provide a means by which you and they can evaluate their work and the program, and discuss their progress and participation. The best way to find out what your volunteers think about the program is to ask them;
• keep your volunteers informed and up to date about any changes that might be happening in the library

Take an interest in your volunteers and their lives:

• talk to them, ask their opinions and then listen to and respect them;
• make yourself available to your volunteers so that they know they can talk to you;
• tangible things go down well with teens. A card on their birthday or for special occasions might be appreciated.

Make sure they know that you recognize the value of their work:

• tell them when they have done something well and try not to be too quick to criticize;
• thank the volunteers for the work they are doing for the library;
• institute volunteer thank-you events, such as an early evening event or a brunch a few times a year;
• give teens their Certificate of Appreciation when they complete their service - see Appendix H;
• when the teen decides to stop volunteering at the library, thank them and tell them how beneficial their work has been to the library.

In short, treat teen volunteers in the same way library staff members are treated.

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Developing the teen volunteer's work force readiness skills

Unlike other volunteer programs, the teen community service program is not intended primarily to provide the library with free labor. Rather, it is intended to provide the teen with an opportunity for healthy growth and development and to help the teen acquire basic work force readiness skills.

Appendix A contains the list of functional skills needed for effective work performance that have been identified by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), a project of the U.S. Department of Labor. These are the skills that employers expect to see in high school graduates before they can be full participating members of the work force.

Here are some ways that librarians can ensure that the teen's volunteer experience at the library provides the opportunity to acquire the basic work force readiness skills.

Resource management

Just learning to show up on time for a work shift is an important job skill. Be sure that your teen volunteers understand that they have a schedule. Have them sign a time sheet. Monitor their attendance, praise them for achievements and point out shortcomings if they exist.

Teens who work on Advisory Councils may have the opportunity to prepare and follow a budget, particularly if they are doing fund-raising. If your community service project has a budget, you can share that with the teens and show how you are following it. It might be interesting to the teens to learn how you allocate your library materials budget as well. Anything that you can do to show how money is managed in an organization is helpful in developing this skill.

Information management

You may find that your teens have difficulty understanding and following directions. Often this is a failure to manage information properly. Try communicating information both verbally and in writing. Encourage the teen volunteers to organize the information they need to do their library jobs in some way ­ in a folder they can keep on a shelf in a workroom, perhaps.

If possible, include your teen volunteers in any Information Literacy training that the library is providing to either staff or customers. Online resources offer whole new challenges in finding, evaluating, and using information. Teens who show a special competency in this area may even be able to help instruct other library customers as they navigate the complex new information resources of the digital age.

Social interaction

The library work environment offers a teen many opportunities to learn important social interaction skills. The teen volunteers should be made to feel that they are part of a team, whether this is the group of teen volunteers or the broader library team. Help them learn how to work effectively in this group setting. They will need to be able to cooperate with other people to get a job done, for example. This is a skill that most of us take for granted, but it requires a lot of negotiation that may be difficult for teens who are reluctant to ask questions or ask for help.

The teens who participated in the pilot project at the County of Los Angeles Public Library found that interacting with people was one of the most rewarding aspects of their volunteer experience. They enjoyed activities such as working as a group to produce a newsletter, reading to children, and helping people use computers. These positive interactions produce some of the most important skills they will bring to the work force later on. Be sure that your teen volunteers do not work in isolation without the opportunity for this kind of social growth.

Systems behavior and performance

The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills used this term to describe the skills associated with knowing how the world works, or more specifically how your library works. The world has become such a complex place that many teens don't know how one piece affects another or how actions produce consequences. Do what you can to show your teen volunteers how the library where they work fits into the library system as a whole, how their specific task contributes to the operations of the library, how the library fits into the larger local government to which it belongs.

Human and technology interaction

Employers are insistent that ALL people in the work force need to be computer literate and comfortable with all forms of emerging technologies. Give your teens supervised opportunities to use the various kinds of technologies in the library, even those that are behind the scenes. Introduce them to the fax machine, workroom computers and printers, and the various systems and software that is installed on your machines. Where appropriate, encourage them to use computers in their work.

Affective skills: attitudes, motivation, and values

The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills did not elaborate on this set of skills. It is not difficult to imagine, however, how a positive volunteer experience could make a difference in a teen's attitudes about the library as a representative of other government organizations and about volunteering or working. Hopefully, you will be able to reinforce the teen's motivation to continue to develop in positive ways. You and the other library staff will also be subtly communicating your own values. The teens will quickly pick up the culture in your organization. Hopefully, that will be a culture of cooperation, mutual respect, and dedication to public service.

Your teen volunteers will be changed by their experiences at the library. As you work with these young adults, talk to them about work. Share your own work history. Tell them what brought you to librarianship. Tell them about the satisfactions and rewards you derive from your work. If your library policy permits, share a salary schedule with them and talk about how education correlates with salary levels. Tell them about what it takes to get into library school and where those graduate schools are located. Tell them about scholarship opportunities. With any luck, you will plant a seed that will flower into another brilliant career in library science. Even if the teen shows no particular interest in our field, this kind of conversation will help them think about the kinds of decisions they will need to make as they consider their own career options.

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Managing problems with teen volunteers

Teens are in a state of transition and are experiencing physical and emotional changes. They are very sensitive and self-conscious and this can manifest itself in extreme shyness, bravado, or loud, rude or aggressive behavior.

Partly because of these factors, having teen volunteers in the library can be problematic. Hopefully (!) the tips above will alleviate many potential problems. However, should problems occur:

• remember that teen volunteers will make mistakes. When dealing with teens try to be relaxed and have empathy with what it's like to be a teen;
• remember that not all teens are alike and, just like any other group of people, different teens will have to be handled differently;
• again, not all teens are the same, and if one person is being problematic, don't assume the others will be problematic, and don't take the problems out on the other teens.
• ensure that any rules and regulations you expect the teen to comply with are clearly laid out, and that you enforce these firmly and consistently;
• deal with problems in the same way in which you would deal with other staff members. Talk to the teen privately, away from other teens, staff members and customers.

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Evaluating Your Teen Volunteer Program

Why evaluate?

As with any library program, it is important to evaluate the teen volunteer program in order to assess its success. The evaluation can be important in determining whether your teen volunteers are benefiting from the program, and if your library staff are happy working alongside teen volunteers. It will also help you decide whether you have chosen the appropriate model of community service for your library.

At the least, you will want to check to see whether or not you have reached the objectives you set at the beginning of the program.

How to evaluate

There are a number of means by which you can evaluate your program.

Time/Contact logs

You can ask library staff to complete logs that reveal how much time they spend on the project, and logs that show how much time they spend interacting with members of the community and the local school(s). The results of this evaluation will ensure that library staff are spending an appropriate amount of time on the project, and will illustrate the level of involvement the community has in the project. It will also clearly show the community relations that are being built. Sample time/contact log forms can be found below.

Time Logs: Library Staff Time Logs: Community Contacts

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Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be distributed to library staff, teen volunteers, and members of the community who are involved in the project. Completing the questionnaires, perhaps anonymously, will give participants the opportunity to tell you what they think about the project. Questionnaires can be a very efficient way to elicit quantifiable data that can be used to support the validity of the program. Sample questionnaires for library staff and teen volunteers can be found below.

Questionnaire: Teens Questionnaire: Library Staff

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Focus groups

When you want to discover people's attitudes and opinions about a topic, it can be a good idea to talk to them as well as asking them to complete questionnaires. You can get more in-depth information about teens' attitudes from a group discussion than from a questionnaire. If you use the two modes of evaluation together, they can complement each other very well.

Sample questions to use in focus groups with teens just beginning the program and those who have been in the program for a period of time can be found below.

Focus Group Questions I Focus Group Questions II

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Determining Objectives | Choosing a Model of Community Service | Getting Support from Library Staff | Getting Community Support | Designing the Program

 

Revised 03/07