Tales from a Loud Librarian

Teen Read Week (TRW) happens during lunch in the school library. Since there are three lunch periods, we celebrated from 11AM to 1:10PM every day. In years previous, we had two lunches, and  it was so much easier to schedule students to help run the activities, but now it is just more difficult to manage multiple activities on one day like we did in the past. Also, with the number of students growing to 700 this year, it means that I have to simplify the plan for TRW to make it work and keep my sanity.  The theme of TRW this year was "Unleash your Story." We put the focus on character through all our activities. We started the week with a showing of a Twilight Zone episode. This year we showed "100 Yards to the Rim." This episode is all about the main character who travels in time from 1847 to 1961. All he wants is to find a new home out west for his family. His travel through time allows him to do just that. It was a hit. We also showed an animate

If it is mid-October, then that means Teen Read Week must have arrived. We have been celebrating TRW at PFTSTA in some fashion since I became librarian there in 2006. Every year, I tap the library book groups in high school to help me plan. We take the activities we did the year before and fit them into the theme that YALSA has set for the year. There is always a video showing of an episode from the Tiwlight Zone, a guessing game, a craft activity, photo op, and guess the number of candies in a jar. It makes my life easier to have programs that work repeated every year, and the kids have something to look forward to that has generated some excitement the year before. You can find a list of all the activities that we have planned on the library website . When the week is over, I will post pictures from TRW on the same link. Happy Teen Read Week!