Youth and teen services personnel are some of the hardest-working people I know. We go into this profession knowing that we’re going to be working for relatively low pay with regards to our education, and unfortunately extremely low recognition among our peers in other avenues. With the stereotype of being THE pink “collar” of a pink ghetto profession, it’s easy for even others in librarianship to think, OH, they just read stories to kids and play games with teens all day- how hard is that?
What people don’t realize how much effort, energy, and planning goes into these programs, and how hard it is to maintain a public face all the time in front of a crowd of youths. Adults? Easy- they WANT to be at whatever program they come to, either because they want to learn what you’re teaching them or because they’re interested in the speaker. Teens and tweens? They might not have a choice, they might just be bored, they might have been dropped off, or they might actually want to cause trouble. What interests one might not interest others all, and because we get them at certain times of the day (namely, after school and weekends) they are pumped up on adrenaline and jumping from idea to idea like dandelion fluff in the wind.
The most frustrating thing for me as a tween/teen librarian is to have a program that, in my head, completely blows up. It’s one where I’ve put time and energy and planning into, and tweens/teens show up, but things just go wrong. Something doesn’t work right, or I can’t recreate an experiment or craft that I just did fifteen minutes ago, or a new DVD that came in somehow got scratched up and is unwatchable. One class may have had a party at school and half of the tweens are on a sugar high from pixie sticks, while others are in a dispute over which is better: Godzilla or Mothra. Everyone has those days- you just want to curl up somewhere and cry, and you wonder, “WHY did I EVER think that doing this job was a GOOD idea?”
That is where we find our courage. Because courage isn’t always who’s the loudest, and who’s the biggest advocate. It’s not who’s doing the most innovative programs, or who’s getting the most kids in the door, or who has the highest circulation stats. Courage is having the strength to say today sucked. But I’m going back tomorrow, and I’m going to do it again.
And that, miraculously enough, is where you start to win over the hardest of the kids. Because while they threw their hardest at you, you were strong enough to come back. You made the choice to come back, and that little choice to get up, get dressed, and come to work and do another program, order more books, or even speak with another teen, can be louder than the biggest sign to a teen who needs it.
So, when it seems hopeless, thing about how much worse it could have been, and then try again tomorrow.